


Irresistible Force

by blythechild



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Aftermath of a Case, Alternate Universe - Canon, Betrayal, Danger, Denial of Feelings, Developing Relationship, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fake Character Death, Falling In Love, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Male-Female Friendship, Phone Calls & Telephones, Separations, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-17
Updated: 2012-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-31 08:34:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 50,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reid doesn't accept Prentiss's death and resolves to find her on his own. His motivations are complicated by the manhunt for Ian Doyle, his own doubts about his future at the BAU, and his unresolved feelings for Emily.</p><p>This story focuses on the period between Prentiss's 'death' in season 6 through to the season 7 opener. So, it goes without saying that there are spoilers in here for seasons 6 & 7.</p><p>This should be considered an alternate universe fic although it mirrors many incidents from the canon. Warnings apply to the whole story - I won't warn for individual chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Abroad

**Author's Note:**

> I was pretty angry about the dog's breakfast that became of Criminal Minds throughout season 6, and the way the writers dropped some of the things from that season when they created episodes for season 7 (ummmm, Reid's headaches? helllloooooo?). So, this is a bit of a fix-it fic. Needless to say, this will contain elements from Seasons 6 & 7, but not adhere to their canon.
> 
> This story contains mature situations, violence, and sexual content. It should not be read by minors.
> 
> This is fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over any characters. It was created as a personal entertainment.

The south of France was hotter than he expected, and he felt out of place amongst the tanned European women and their sporty, older consorts. He didn’t own a pair of shorts anyway. He also felt conspicuously _pale_ ; a quality that stood out in a culture that valued labor and recreation equally. He hadn’t felt this way since college. Everywhere he saw enviable ways of living but knew that he couldn’t participate in them. He was always just out of reach of ‘normalcy’; even with great effort he could never seem to get it _quite_ right. Trying and failing to assimilate was often less forgivable than being noticeably alien, in his experience.

_She would probably blend right in. She wouldn’t even have to think about it._

He shook his head to clear the thought and immediately regretted it. The pain that was lurking behind a screen in the back of his head used it as an excuse and roared to life. He could not only feel but _see_ his pulse, like an overlay on his vision. Each beat tightened a band around his head. He readjusted his Ray Bans and dug around in his satchel for his prescription.

He popped 2 more pills. He was already way over the prescribed limit but they barely made the pain manageable when the attacks came. His neurologist suggested opioids again at his last visit, but that was never going to be an option and he told him so in no uncertain terms. Better the pain than the addiction, he thought. But how long could he remain functional like this?

He shook his head again and then groaned at his own stupidity. Swearing wasn’t his style, but he had to admit, his brain was sorely trying his patience these days. The light changed, he shifted into gear, and drove on towards the next name on the list.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Hey, Junior Genius, what brings you to the Wizard’s Cave?”

“Junior Genius? Seriously? You are aware that I age, Garcia…”

“Yes, painfully so my baby boy, ever since you banned me from giving you surprise parties.”

“I didn’t do it to curb your plans for worldwide domination, Garcia. I just don’t like my differences to be placed in the spotlight, that’s all.”

“Luckily for you, the plans for Garcia hegemony continue unabated. And I personally believe that the things which make you different are worth celebrating, but we’ll leave that argument for another day…” Garcia smiled brightly at him. “What do you need, sweetie?”

“Firstly, this isn’t for a current case – it’s… well, it’s personal.”

“Oooohhhhhhh! A personal request! Love it!”

“Ummm, okay… well, secondly, if you feel uncomfortable about it, that’s fine, I’ll understand.”

Garcia paused.

“Will it involve breaking laws?”

“Possibly.”

“Could it lead to me getting fired?”

“Maybe.”

“Will it make Hotch’s head explode if he ever finds out?”

“Oh, undoubtedly.”

“Okay,” she huffed “I’m in. What are you looking for?”

Garcia faced the wall of technology that she had painstakingly built for the bureau and cracked her knuckles. He noticed that her nail polish was the same shade of iridescent violet as her lipstick and tried to create a formula to calculate the time she had spent shopping for matching cosmetics factoring in proprietary brand formulas, yearly colour fads, marketing release dates, and geographic availability. The resulting figure was astounding.

“I need a list of names. Women aged 25-40 who received expedited travel visas to Europe from the U.S. during the second and third week in April. I need their names, travel dates, and destinations.”

Garcia blinked a few times. “Honey, that’s going to be a massive list…”

“You might want to focus on Western Europe: France, Italy, Spain, Germany… And this might help as well.” He handed her a handwritten list of names. “Flag these names if they turn up.”

Garcia read the list, folded it slowly and neatly, and then looked up at him with concern. “You know that I love you, honey. Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“Because there’s something wrong here. Because no one else is looking.” He fixed her with a look that he rarely used. “This isn’t some form of grief denial. There is a pattern of inconsistencies that I can’t ignore. I have to know for sure, one way or the other. I can’t move on until I have that, Penelope.”

“Tell me that this is based on more than just your gut.”

“If the possible is true, could you live with doing nothing?”

“Jesus…” Garcia sighed and looked down at her hands.

“All right.” She turned to face him again. “I’m not convinced that this is the right thing to do and I’m pretty sure that I’m just feeding into your delusion, but if there’s a possibility that we’ve all been had… well, you’re right – I couldn’t live with doing nothing about it.”

“Thank you, Penelope.” He exhaled a breath that he wasn’t aware that he was holding.

“Keep your thanks – it’s still going to be an unmanageable list…”

He turned to go and then remembered.

“Garcia, this stays between us, right?”

“Are you kidding? Do you remember the part of the conversation we had about me getting fired? I like my job, pretty boy… thumbscrews and chocolate won’t be able to pry this from me.”

“And Morgan?”

Garcia shot him ‘a look’ and then smiled ruefully. “I love that man, but what he doesn’t know about me could fill the Library of Congress. Don’t worry.”

“Okay.” He smiled. “Text me when you have something.”

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

His list was dwindling and so was his hope. It seemed like he had been driving for weeks – many of these places were new to him but they barely registered beyond the car rental agencies and the local hotels. More than once he asked himself what he really hoped to find. If she were really gone, he wouldn’t find anything. But, if she was deep underground, he might not find anything either. Garcia was right: he was working on nothing more than his gut. It was so unlike him to trust instinct over evidence and yet he was driven to do it. He wondered what the others would think of him ‘vibing’ his way through Western Europe and came up with assorted embarrassing answers. 

8 more names on the list: 4 in France, 2 in Spain, and 2 in Portugal. He had no idea how he was going to manage Portugal knowing absolutely no Portuguese. As it was he was straining to be coherent in French. He understood much of what was said, but, as the locals bluntly reminded him wherever he went, his accent was atrocious. 

Making it through the winding streets of Arles, he drove up and out into the countryside. He was amazed that, despite humanity’s obsession with progress and modernity, places like this still existed. Endless fields probably unchanged since Van Gogh painted them over a century ago patterned the landscape in endless variations of green, gold and brown. When he arrived at the house, it rose suddenly and unassumingly out of those same fields; just another cottage dotting the horizon. He pulled into the driveway and parked next to an older compact car. A good sign – maybe someone was home. More than a few addresses on his list had been empty and he had wasted valuable time waiting for the occupant to come home again. He grabbed his satchel from the passenger seat and headed to the front door.

So many addresses. He had lost the butterflies that had accompanied the hope he harbored in the beginning. The first doorbell that he rang had made him so nervous that he almost became physically ill when the door opened to reveal a complete stranger to him. The woman had taken pity on him and his story of trying to find his long lost cousin. She let him in, sat him down, and revived him with some homemade hot cocoa. Sigrid had been her name. He sent out a silent thanks to Sigrid and her delicious Belgian hot cocoa… He wasn’t so unprepared now. He’d knock, confirm identity, scratch the name from the list, and try to find a decent hotel for the night. He needed to lie down anyway before his pounding head _put_ him down.

He knocked and looked down at his list: Marion Laurent. He heard footsteps and then the door opened.

“Marion Laurent?” He looked up.

“Oui.”

No. Emily Prentiss.

He stood very still. She stared back at him with a practiced look of polite curiosity on her face, but it didn’t hide the flash of panic behind it. Not from him, anyway. 

He removed his glasses and willed his voice to work. “Puis-je vous parler dans la maison s'il vous plait ?”

_Let me in, Emily…_

“Bien sur, monsieur. Allons-y…” She gestured for him to enter and he did.


	2. Don't Panic

“So, I hear that you’re leaving us.” 

“I haven’t had a real vacation in almost 7 years. I think I’m due.”

“Hotch said that it was a ‘leave of absence’. He said not to plan on having you back any time soon. Something you wanna tell me, kid?”

He was so wrapped up in his plan that he hadn’t given much thought to how the team might react to his departure. But he should have. He planned on coming back, no matter what he discovered, but to the others it probably looked like another agent was leaving the fold.

“I need some time, Morgan. I need a break from… all of this.”

“I get it, kid, believe me, I do. But,” Morgan breathed in and out suddenly “you’ve been pulling away since before… Prentiss… and its got me worried about you.”

Reid looked at his friend, knew the grief that he worked so hard to keep in check, and decided to give him something even if it was just deflecting Morgan from his true agenda.

“I really miss her, Morgan. I can’t believe how bad this feels. When Gideon left – that was bad – but at least I knew that he was out there, living his life. I felt abandoned and betrayed but the grief was finite. It was sorta the same way with Elle, but this… this…”

“I know.” Morgan sat down on the edge of his desk. “Its sorta like we didn’t really know her at all and yet we’re grieving for the person that she was when she was with us. I have to believe that the friend that I love and miss was the real Emily. I’ve been undercover – its not who you are, its just survival. Whatever she withheld from us, I believe that she did it out of concern for us. That speaks to the Emily I knew, not Lauren.”

“I told her things that I never told anyone else…”

“Reid… you’re a good judge of character. Don’t doubt the instincts that led you to believe in her.”

“Do you still believe in her, Morgan? Really? Could you do what she did – sleep with the target of an investigation, lie to your friends?”

“I don’t armchair quarterback tactical decisions like that. She was deep under – way deeper than I ever went. And the risks were high. Who knows what I’d do in her place. But I do believe in her, Reid. Yeah. I can’t explain it, but I do.”

Reid nodded and slung his bag over his shoulder. His desk was as clean as the day he arrived in the unit. It certainly looked like he was clearing out for good. He could feel Morgan watching him.

“I gotta go.”

“Okay. But you’re coming back, right, kid?”

He gave Morgan one of his trademark tight-lipped smiles. Then, without saying a word, he turned and headed towards the elevators.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The interior of the cottage belonged to that of a mature woman with a taste for provincial folk art, hand-me-down furniture, and collections of curios. She was a grandmother of three, happily widowed, and a Roman Catholic though not overly devoted in her faith. Perhaps the most interesting fact about the cottage was that its owner wasn’t too picky about her tenants. She was renting to make money – not because she needed it to survive but because she was saving up to immigrate to Greece in hopes of getting a second chance at happiness. Perhaps a second marriage as well. She was willing to overlook just about anything in a potential renter so long as their money was good. This woman’s unimpressive life, boiled down to its essential elements through the things that she accumulated, assailed Reid’s senses like a bad smell upon entering the main sitting room. It made him sad, but he also knew that it was the reason why Emily had chosen it. Her profiler skills would have told her the same story, and also, that if someone should come looking for her, her landlady would have as few details as possible to pass on.

“What are you doing here?”

Her face had given up the pretense of curiosity the moment that the door closed and was now ruled by full-on panic.

“That’s the question that you’re going to lead with? Really? Because, to me, the answer is obvious.”

She stared at him and, though it was hard to tell, he calculated his odds on being hugged or slugged at even.

“Hi Emily.”

“Hi Reid.”

Another awkward moment passed between them until Emily ducked her head and walked across the room to envelop him in a hug. He was very glad that the odds hadn’t gone the other way. But now he was faced with an unforeseen variable: he didn’t know what to say next. ‘You’re not dead’ didn’t seem right. ‘How are you’ seemed ridiculous, as he had come to her house believing her to be dead in the first place, so any state of being would be preferable. ‘I’ve missed you’ was on the tip of his tongue but it would belie the feelings of anger and betrayal that bubbled inside him. ‘Why did you lie’ seemed pertinent but he felt that he wasn’t yet ready for the reasons why. Of course, the one thing that he _really_ wanted to say he couldn’t even explain to himself yet, and he hoped that it wasn’t etched all over him for her to see. He decided to let her lead.

“Did you come alone?” she mumbled into his shoulder.

“Yes.”

“Does anyone else know that you’re here?”

“No. You are free to kill me and dispose of my body at your convenience.”

“That’s not what I meant…”

“I know. I was going for humor. I guess I’m nervous.”

They were still hugging. He couldn’t seem to let go and she appeared to be experiencing the same reluctance.

“I’ve missed you so much.”

“You have? I mean, so have I… we all have but… it’s sorta something none of us had to go through, if you know what I mean.”

She pulled away. It had to end some time.

“I’m sorry about putting you all through that but I didn’t have a choice.”

“Narrowing your options to what you are willing to do, and viewing possible courses of action are two separate things, Emily. You made a choice but it wasn’t the only viable option. Off the top of my head I can think of 5 other alternatives that do not include faking your own death. Surely you could have come up with at least one…”

It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it the moment after it escaped his lips. She was skittish and edgy, and he was confronting her on it point blank. It was not a good way to re-establish rapport and convince her to change her mind. Also, why was his relief so short lived? How had anger become his primary emotion when only moments ago he was convincing himself that she actually _was_ dead? As always, her response surprised him.

“You’re right. I had a brief window to take advantage of ‘dying’ and I had just come off major surgery… clarity was not my ally. If I had time to think the possibilities through – the long-term effect on the team, the compromise to my professional integrity, the tremendous task that I would have to manage on my own – I probably would’ve made a different choice. But I didn’t and here we are. No one can change the past, Reid, no matter how much they want to.”

The band of pain around his head tightened and he winced. 

“Spencer, I’m really, really sorry. Please believe that.”

_I want to believe that. I want to believe everything about you. But what if this is just part of the lie?_

He rubbed his temple and tried to breathe through the pain.

“Did you talk to J.J.? Is that how you found me?”

“J.J. _knows_?”

Now it was Emily’s turn to rub her temple.

“Dammit. Yeah, J.J. knows. She helped me get out of the country.”

“Who else?”

Emily hesitated.

“Who else, Em?”

Her face flushed and his conscious mind noted it as an atypical behavioral tic to be analyzed later.

“Hotch.”

“Un _believe_ able!”

His throbbing head did not like exclamations. The band tightened again and Reid started seeing bright globes of colour at his vision’s edge. Emily’s expression changed from hesitation to concern, and he turned away from her making the room tilt.

“Reid, are you okay?”

“How am I supposed to be ‘okay’ when 3 of my closest friends lie to me on a daily basis? My world view has altered slightly – forgive me if I need a moment to adjust.”

“Don’t blame them – J.J. was following orders from the State Department and Hotch understood the end game. They were both extremely reluctant about the plan but they helped me anyway. They are as loyal and honorable as you have always believed.”

“Yeah, except that they have lied to my face every day since you died. I mean, how do you sit and listen to your team members dealing with their grief? Or console your friend who spends every weekend crying at your house for 3 months? How does the guilt not eat you up inside?”

“You cried for me?”

Emily’s voice seemed small and far away. He looked back at her and discovered that his vision was blurring.

“You _died_ , Emily! I loved you and you died, so I went to another person I loved who would understand. Except she knew more than me and knew that my tears were pointless but she didn’t say a word – not one word to ease my misery…”

“Spencer, she couldn’t. You know how much you mean to J.J. Don’t you think that this really _is_ eating her up inside? And Hotch knows better than anyone how the team is gonna react to his deception. He can read all of us like books. But he understands the nature of difficult decisions, and, for better or worse, he knows how to live with them. He’ll deal with the betrayal, and he’ll make it look easy, but don’t think that doing this to _any_ of you is easy for him.”

Both hands went to his temples now. His face felt wet. Tears. He wasn’t sure if it was because of his head or emotional distress. The pain was a bright physical thing now. It overruled everything and pressed out against all of his edges suffocating his will to react against it. 

“Blame me, Spencer. It was my past that brought Doyle into the unit. I hid his son from him, I locked him into a dark hole and tossed away the key… or at least I thought I did…”

“Emily, stop…”

He needed to lie down. The pain hadn’t been this bad in weeks. His pulse was elevated. His blood pressure had increased. The combined blood flow and pressure to his brain was lighting up sections of his frontal lobe igniting new loci of pain to add to the greater whole. The resulting symphony was exquisite as it was devastating. He had a sudden irrational idea that the pain had an identity and that this unseen malevolent being was bent on crafting a single pure note that would resonate within his cranium and shatter it outwardly. But, no… no, that was just crazy.

“I could… handle losing your faith in me… maybe…”

“Stop…”

“But don’t take out your anger towards _me_ on _them_ , Spencer. Please - just hate me instead.”

“Emily. Please. STOP!”

The last phrase was too much and his legs cut out from under him. He was close to a chair and blindly grabbed for the arm that prevented him from hitting the floor.

“Spencer!”

He felt her coming towards him and raised a hand to block her. His eyes were closed being of little use to him now.

“Get my bag.”

“What?!”

“Bag. Pills.”

He pulled himself to his feet and stepped forward to the couch that he saw in his mind’s eye. He barked his shin on the oak coffee table and found himself oriented within his projection. 

_6 steps forward, 3 steps right, drop._

Falling onto the couch was like collapsing onto an old, dying man; worn skin stretched over a boney frame that smelled of history and regret. It was uncomfortable and Reid felt like he might die if he ever moved from that spot. A second later Emily was crouched beside him.

“How many?”

“Three.”

“It says that the daily maximum is three. How many have you taken already?”

“Four.”

“Spencer…”

He knew that she was thinking about his addiction. She was remembering how she called him on it before the rest of the team had a suspicion. She barely knew him but she had enough fortitude to be blunt, and to offer help. Most of the time he chose to forget how he treated her then, and that he never thanked her for how she treated him. He savored her bluntness and her consideration – most times he thought of her as a good barometer of his spotty social skills. And he knew that she, of all people, wouldn’t hesitate to tell him something he didn’t want to hear. But he hoped that this time she saw him as he was: a smart man terrified by the anarchy of his own mind. 

“Em… please…”

He felt 3 capsules pressed into his palm.

“I’ll get you some water…”

He slammed the pills into his mouth and dry swallowed. His body shook with relief that he still knew her a little. 

“Are these the same headaches as before? The ones you told me about?”

“Yes.”

“Were they always this bad?”

“No. Got worse after you… died.”

“Have you told anyone at the BAU about them?”

“I told you. Knew that you’d keep it to yourself. You’re good with secrets.”

He felt a light brush across his neck. A sigh. She must be sitting right next to him. He fumbled around until he grabbed her hand.

“Don’t. I didn’t mean it like that. I’ve always trusted you with my secrets.”

He squeezed her hand.

“If you don’t mind, I’m gonna pass out now. Don’t be alarmed.”

He didn’t have time to hear her reply before the hand of unconsciousness snatched him away.


	3. If Only...

By the time he had reached the movie theater, he had been running for 10 blocks. She was the only person still out front. Running hadn’t helped, he was still late but now he was also sweaty and out of breath. She turned and saw him, giving him her ‘unimpressed’ face. Boy, was he gonna get it. 

“Emily I’m sorry I’m late. There was this guy on the b-”

She reached out and pulled him into her, kissing him in a way that was definitely inappropriate for a public space.

What the- …oh, right… I’m dreaming…

The moment that he realized he was dreaming was always the same: pleasure mixed with a healthy dose of disappointment. This would be the ‘perfect’ Emily – the ultimate fantasy version that his subconscious always served up. He wasn’t afraid to do and say what he wanted with Perfect Emily. To her, he was the sexiest, smartest, most amazing guy she had ever met. They did things together that made him blush in his waking moments. She told him everything and he never had to wonder if she was holding anything back. He told her that he loved her as often as he liked without hesitation.

But it wasn’t real. No matter how exacting his memory was, no amount of detail or infinite shuffling of variables managed to conjure up the Emily that he missed with her foibles, complexities, and surprises intact. It seemed that his intelligence had limits and calculating the exact specifications of Emily Prentiss was one of them. There was nothing he could do except enjoy the small comfort that he received with this doppelganger. It almost made living without her bearable.

He kissed her back, grabbing her waist and arching her against him.

If only this had happened once, for real. Just once. Would that make losing her better or worse, I wonder?

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Soft globes of colour began to take shape in front of him. It was pleasant. In fact he felt pleasantly soft-edged all over. Oh, excellent – the drugs had kicked in. Unlike his dilaudid addiction, the headache meds didn’t allow him to drop out of reality. He blamed his blackouts on his body’s limits to pain. It’s like his physical self collectively elected to take a time-out and re-start his system. They generally weren’t very long, and by the time he had regained consciousness, the medication had taken the pain down a notch.

He lay back and enjoyed the light show for a minute. Then, slowly, shapes came into focus. He realized that some of those shapes formed Emily looking down at him. He smiled at her.

“Don’t be alarmed?!” She clearly hadn’t taken his advice, though it was nice to know that she worried. “Spencer, what is going on with you?”

He tested sitting up. Everything was still soft and a little wobbly, but the pain was back behind its screen. He propped himself up until he was seated next to her on the old-man couch. 

“No one’s sure. I’ve been tested for tumors, aneurysms, organic brain damage, insufficient serotonin and dopamine levels, early-onset Alzheimer’s, MS, meningitis, Jakob-Creutzfeldt disease, schizophrenia, syphilis, retinal detachment, tympanic membrane ruptures, and poison. A wide variety of pain medications seem to be useless, and there doesn’t appear to be a pattern to the timing or severity of the attacks. Most specialists that I have seen suggest that it is psycho-somatic.” His last sentence suggested exactly what he thought about _those_ theories.

He rattled off the tests as a matter of course – he was fond of lists after all – but her sudden gasp made him look up to see the distress in her eyes.

“I’m okay now – I’m managing.”

“You call passing out cold on my couch from pain ‘managing’?”

“Well, that doesn’t happen all that often…”

“Something is very wrong, Spencer.”

“I know that.” His voice was tight.

She looked away quickly. “I know that you do… can you stand?”

“I think so.”

“Come into the kitchen and I’ll get you some water. This couch is about as comfortable as a morgue slab.”

…

She sat across from him and allowed her tea to cool between her palms. She was waiting for the deathly pallor to leave his face. He was talking and gesturing, but he still looked like he did when he passed out on her couch. She repeatedly checked his breathing as he lay there because he looked…well, _dead_. She had to distract herself from that thought…

“What led you to believe that I wasn’t dead?”

“It wasn’t any one thing, really. It was a series of events that, when viewed as part of a whole, didn’t add up.”

“Like what?”

“None of us were permitted to see you in the hospital.” He swallowed hard. “I tried but both Hotch and J.J. stopped me. That makes sense now, of course…”

Something inside her tightened as he spoke. “What else?”

“Your funeral was really… showy. A flag over the casket and everything. I knew that you didn’t want that. Your mother wasn’t there – everyone noticed that, and they buried you. I know that you have always favored cremation.”

She was speechless.

“Also, your casket was too light.”

“Too light?”

“I was a pallbearer, and your casket was too light. The standard casket, even with custom fittings, is 150lbs. with a 5lbs. deviation either way. You weigh 123 lbs. Add your weight to that of the casket, factor in another 5lbs. for clothing, drapery, and mementoes placed within - _your_ casket was still 17 lbs. light.”

She stared at him. “You know how much I weigh?”

“You’ve lost some weight since then.” He looked away. “I imagine that it’s due to stress.”

She absently lifted her cup to her mouth and then lowered it without taking a sip. Her hands were shaking. “So, based on the weight of my coffin and my absent mother, you determined that I had faked my own death and escaped to Europe.”

“Well, when you put it like that, it sounds insane… I didn’t make the connections right away but I assure you that I thought this out thoroughly.”

“Then why are you the only one here in my kitchen right now? Why not tell the rest of the team?”

He sighed and leaned across the table. “Maybe you had your reasons for disappearing. Maybe it wasn’t about Doyle, or the team, or your career at the FBI. Maybe we didn’t really know you at all. I could speculate about the whys, but in the end, I’m a scientist and a detective: I have to _know_.”

She abruptly pushed the chair back and got up from the table. She couldn’t look at him as he questioned whether anything that he knew about her was true. She heard him move and knew that he was standing too. Was he afraid that she was going to bolt? Would he try and stop her if she did?

“I’m in a difficult position here…”She spoke to the kitchen cabinets. “What with my credibility shredded to hell, it’s hard for me to convince you that the team has been closer to me than family. I don’t know how to describe how painful it was to deceive you all, and in such an outrageous way.”

“Then why did you leave, Emily?”

“Love.” She turned to face him. “I love you all, and Doyle would destroy each of you to get at me. I left to give myself the freedom to put that bastard down for good, so that I could come home… maybe make things right with all of you again.”

There was a mix of relief and sadness on his face. It clearly wasn’t the answer that he wanted to hear, even though it was one that he expected. He puzzled her. Thinking back through their conversation, she realized that he had sidestepped his reasons for coming after her alone.

“But there’s something I still don’t understand,” she began “If my reasons had been other than what they are; if I was just seeking escape, or if I were to die in pursuit of Doyle – even if I succeeded in catching him and returned home to face the consequences – all you had to do was wait. The answer would have borne itself out one way or another, and you would _know_. Why did you conceal your plans and risk your health by tracking me down in person?”

He was looking at his shoes: soft grey runners with white soles. His hands were jammed in his pant pockets and he was purposefully avoiding her eyes. He looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The idea made her smile until it led to another, unexpected idea.

“You came to find me in person because your reasons were personal.” She said it slowly so that she had time to wrap her head around the statement.

He sighed like a man who had played a challenging opponent but had finally realized that he had been out maneuvered. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” It was all that she could think at that moment.

“Why does anyone hesitate? Fear, doubt, the consequences of rejection…” He wasn’t looking at her. _Look at me_. “Let’s face it, I’m not exactly your type.”

“My _type_?” She wondered what Reid thought her ‘type’ was, and why he didn’t qualify. She became instantly angry that he had categorized her in such a way, and that he had devalued himself by comparing his qualities to that of an imagined archetype. It was a logical fallacy and she was surprised that he couldn’t see it for what it was.

“I decided that I needed more evidence before I could proceed.” Evidence? He had built an experiment around her?

“What kind of evidence?”

“Social interaction. Affection. Attraction. I knew how I felt but that’s only half the equation, isn’t it? I decided to put myself in your path more often – away from work – and see if any noticeable change in your behavior occurred.”

It seemed so charmingly simple. Not only did he want to save himself from rejection, but he also wanted to save her from an awkward personal development. She had no idea how he thought that he could determine any of this without exposing his feelings to her. It was sweet but wrongheaded. Affection is vulnerability; at some point you have to offer up your tenderest spot and hope that the other person doesn’t rip it from you. He could search endlessly for conclusive data and remain safe within his cocoon of uncertainty. He might have gone on like that for years. Suddenly, one question seemed more important to her than any other.

“How long have you felt this way?”

“487 days including this morning.”

Her stomach flipped a little.

“Oh, Spencer…”

“I know, it’s okay.” He waved his hands dismissively while still avoiding her gaze. _Spencer, look at me._ “I guess that I thought I’d never actually find you, so I’d never have to face this. But I did. You’re alive and I’m so grateful that it doesn’t matter what you think of my motivations.”

And there it was. This odyssey was his declaration. To him it was as bold as a sky-written message, made all the more obvious by the fact that he had embarked on it after he had lost all hope. And he thought that he looked ridiculous to her.

“Hearing the news at the hospital – I had a rush of panic and pain, but then, strangely felt nothing. You’d think with the amount of victims I have met over the years that I’d have some idea of what to expect, but it all came as a shock.”

He was addressing his feet and she had no choice but to imagine what that moment was like for each of her friends. 

“At the funeral, as the priest was speaking, I had a glimpse down the road into another future. One where you weren’t dead and I had been brave enough to tell you how I felt when it still mattered. It wasn’t perfect but the idea that it had been _possible_ , and I had denied myself that - ”

His voice caught and she looked up quickly. He was staring at her, composed, eyes wide. The only movement was his left hand at his side, shaking.

“I guess that I thought I had all the time in the world.”

She’d seen that look before. The unassuming bashful nod followed by the open stare – he used it to disarm Alpha-male law enforcement types and UNSUBs in equal measure. It was so effective because it made others believe that they had the upper hand with him, and while they were savoring the moment of superiority, he saw right through them. Past the ego, through the meat and the marrow of them right down into their psychological core that they thought was safely under lock and key. 

She realized that part of her had been making that same mistake for years now: assuming that he was still the boy that she met when she first came to the BAU. He wasn’t. And another part of her had sensed that as well. Whenever they went out – not with the others, just the two of them – to a Russian sci-fi film festival, or when they went shopping for antiquarian books together on their days off, or talking about comics and Doctor Who while waiting for the jet to take off – something inside her wound up tighter. Their conversations were brighter and crisper somehow, yet she only noticed it after they were over and she was forced back into surroundings that seemed muted by comparison. It was so subtle that she had almost missed it.

Almost.

She couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t noticed how much he had changed since she’d met him. His personality had broadened and solidified, his confidence had become palpable, and his profiling skills had sharpened to a lethal exactness. She knew that it took fortitude and bravery to persist in a career to which he was not obviously suited. He could have tried a dozen different paths and been great at all of them, but he stayed at the FBI because his passion for his work was real. Like a virologist who admires the destructive power of Ebola or H1N1, he didn’t try to disguise his pleasure in untangling the secrets of scary people. His eagerness to share his knowledge, his joy at a new, terrible discovery was something that most would find repugnant. But she understood the thrill. She shared it. His enthusiasm was contagious and she secretly loved that about him. 

She also couldn’t ignore his looks. Though not typically attractive, there was no doubt that he was handsome. Both women and men noticed him wherever he went, much to his embarrassment. He seemed unaware of his affect on others, always assuming the least flattering interpretation. She had to admit that she had reacted to him, crouching low, gun in hand as he braced to enter a suspect’s house. She often held her breath worried for his safety, but also feeling a deeper pull that was much more primal as he burst through a door or faced down an UNSUB with nothing more than his wits and a .38 Smith & Wesson. 

Now she had to make a decision. It was surprisingly simple and happened nearly as fast as thought. She saw its effect immediately in his face, his eyes widening, his head tilting as he processed what he saw in her. She found herself walking forward, stopping only inches from him. They stood quietly staring at each other.

 _Profiling each other is supposed to be off limits._ She placed a hand on his shaking arm and stilled it.

_I can’t be other than who I am. I can’t switch this off. You know that…_

_Yeah, I know. So what happens now?_

_I don’t know. This terrifies me._

Her hand rose from his arm to brush his cheek. He leaned into it and closed his eyes letting out a small breath, and his façade fell away showing her how exhausted he was truly was. She stifled her shock as the dark smudges under his eyes seemed to deepen and the sharp angles of his face made him seem thinner. She noticed the lines around his eyes and mouth for the first time and a knot that she didn’t know that she had in her stomach tightened a little more.

“Sit down. I’m going to feed you.”

He opened his eyes and stared. “I-I don’t think that I can stomach anything right now, Em.”

She felt herself flush again and saw that he noticed it. It was just a matter of time before he asked her about it.

“You’re going to try. For me. When was the last time that you ate a real meal anyway?”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She had cooked, he had eaten, and it had been good. He had never imagined her cooking before, but it seemed obvious now; not everyone lived off caffeine and refined sugar. He was surprised at how natural she was in this out-of-place house cooking a meal for a man who had stalked her across an ocean even though she had convinced him that she was dead. He decided not to risk another headache and stopped analyzing it.

“Thanks again. I guess that I could eat after all.”

He rose from the table and joined her at the sink where she was sorting out the washing up. He stepped in front of her and began to place dishes in the hot, soapy water.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“You cooked, I clean.”

“No way. Not from the guy who passed out in my living room an hour ago. One meal does not ‘fix’ you. Sit down, I’ve got this.”

“I’m not a Victorian gentlewoman with a case of the vapors, Emily. Shove over.”

“Fine. You can dry.” She looked unimpressed as she slapped a dish towel over his shoulder. He concluded that this standoff was a victory and waited for her to pass him a dish.

They stood together in silence allowing the mundane task to eclipse everything else. He wondered how to start the conversation again when she handed him a saucepan and leapt in with both feet.

“Ask me what you came here to ask, Spencer. The suspense is killing me and I’m pretty sure I know what it is anyway.”

“Come back with me. To the States.”

“You know that I can’t. Doyle’s still out there.”

“And you’re out here on your own with no leads, am I right? There’s a reason why we profile as a team, Emily – because a fresh perspective can mean the difference between an arrest and months of fruitless searching.”

“I know that.” She flipped a plate in the sink and splashed herself. “The reason why I left the team in the first place was because I had put you all at risk. That risk hasn’t gone away, and it will only intensify if I return and reveal my lie to the world.”

“We take those risks all the time! It’s part of the job. Meanwhile, you’ve made a unilateral decision for all of us, taken all of the risk upon yourself, and what have you achieved in 3 months? How close have you gotten to Doyle?”

She splashed herself again and stayed silent. Pride is a terribly stubborn thing, he thought.

“Let us help you, Emily. Come home and lets get this guy so that we can get on with our lives. He’s just a man, after all, not some supernatural force…”

“You don’t know him, what he’s capable of.” She turned on him. “If I came back and he got to any of you as a result, I couldn’t live with that, Spencer. And he can do it too. Do I have to remind you of what happened to my Interpol team? No, Doyle is _mine_ and I’m out here until he’s caught. End of story.”

She turned back to the sink and began ferociously scrubbing a pan. His heart sank as he saw that her course was set in cement.

“So, you’re asking me to go back to D.C. and perpetuate your lie to our friends until such time as you illegally confine or assassinate an international fugitive.”

“Yes.”

“What if he gets you first?”

Silence settled over the kitchen.

“I go back to work. I lie for you. I wait, and wait, and wait. But you’re gone – fallen off the face of the earth again. Maybe you’re buried in a landfill in Jakarta, or thrown into the surf off the coast of Thailand… maybe you’re just an unclaimed Jane Doe in a morgue half a world away… what do I do then? How do I live through _that_ , Em? How do I explain losing my mind to the team when I realize that you’re never coming back?”

His voice was rising and he imagined that emotion had caused a capillary reaction that was impossible to hide. He slammed his towel hand against the countertop and leaned forward trying to regain some control over himself. Her plan sucked – there was no other way to describe it – and his inability to convince her of it was rating a close second. 

“Listen, I’m so-” He turned to face her just as she reached out to kiss him.

He momentarily forgot how every part of his body worked. He had kissed before, and had been told that he was good at it, but at that moment he couldn’t remember a single damned kiss before this one. Then, like a door slamming open, he was assailed by every fantasy that he’d ever had about Emily Prentiss: every intimate moment, every confidence, every whispered word. He reached out to the fantasy made real and gave it everything that he had. If this was the one moment that would bring a verisimilitude to his Perfect Emily, he was going to make it count. When this Emily was lost to him, Perfect Emily would be all that he had left.

His hands slid into her hair and pulled her into him until there was no daylight between them. His lips moved against her in breathless and hungry pulls, greedy to make the most of this one moment. He turned their bodies and pinned her between himself and the countertop as his hands moved down her back, mapping it out for future memories. She moved too, fitting herself into the sharp arcs that his body made against her. Her hands knotted themselves in the fabric of his shirt and pulled him closer still until he imagined that he heard a stitch pop.

As suddenly as it began, it stopped. They looked at each other as they caught their breath, not sure what should come next. Her lips were dark and highlighted the flush of her cheeks. He didn’t think that he had ever seen her like this, even in his dreams. Her irises were so dilated that her eyes seemed almost black.

“Wow.” She breathed.

It was his turn to blush. He had no control over that, but he still had some semblance of control over his wits, and decided to assert them with a devastatingly-timed compromise.

“Not even _that_ will change your mind, will it?”

“Spencer, don’t -”

He kissed her lightly to silence her. “S’okay, I knew that it wouldn’t. But if you’re going to do this, you’re going to do it _my way_ or I’ll have you arrested on an international terrorism charge and extradited back to the States faster than you can dream up a way to disembowel me.”

“What?” she looked confused. “Wait… What?!?”


	4. Compromise

“Reid, can I have a word?”

Hotch had suddenly appeared beside Reid at his desk in the bullpen. Reid struggled to maintain his calm; his head was pounding and he was having trouble focusing.

“Sure.”

They walked to Hotch’s office where Hotch proceeded to shuffle files on his desk. _Oh, something’s up._

“Your leave of absence is coming up…”

“Yes. Friday.”

“Have you closed out all of your pending case files?” More desk shuffling. No eye contact.

“All but Prendergast. I’m waiting on the court-ordered psych eval. It would have been faster if they had allowed us to interview him after the arrest…”

“Local jurisdiction takes precedence. I’m too old to get into a pissing match with the Maryland D.A.’s office…” Hotch waved the statement away like an annoying fly.

“What’s up, Hotch?”

Finally Hotch looked at him. There was the briefest flash of regret and then it was gone. Reid blinked; that couldn’t have been right…

“I know that you’ve been struggling lately – more so than the others. I don’t know the specifics. You’d have told me if you wanted me to know…” Another flash of regret followed by sadness. “I just want you to know that you’ll always have a place here, Reid.”

“It’s just a vacation, Hotch…” Reid felt his throat tighten.

“In case this… vacation… should cause you to re-evaluate your priorities,” Hotch stepped out from behind his desk and stood in front of Reid “You’ve done excellent work here and I consider you irreplaceable. Whatever you choose to do upon your return, your desk will be waiting if you want it.”

“Umm… I don’t know what to say…”

“Don’t say anything then.” Now guilt splashed across his features. “You know, my position sometimes gets in the way of helping the team in the way that I would like…”

Hotch’s features fell back into their professional impenetrability and he held his hand out to Reid. They shook: it was one of the only forms of respect and intimacy with which Hotch was comfortable. Reid considered whether Hotch was keeping tabs on Garcia’s activities, or whether the man was just a tiny bit psychic.

“Good luck, Reid. If you need anything, just call. I owe you years-worth of favors…”

Hotch turned back to his desk, silently dismissing Reid from the room. Reid wandered back to his desk in a daze that was only partially due to his headache. _What the hell was that about?_

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I don’t appreciate being Lo-Jacked.” Emily groused while looking at the device on the kitchen table.

“That’s an entirely inappropriate term. I told you that the device’s signal is scrambled – no one can pinpoint your location from it. Garcia says that it’s the latest in military tech, for covert insurgency…”

“You want to keep tabs on me – that’s what this comes down to.” She pointed to the comm. unit.

“Can you blame me after all that’s happened?” His voice was sharper than he wanted it to be but it took some of the umbrage out of Emily’s stance. “Communication is a two-way street, Em. You want your freedom and anonymity to do your Dirty Harry thing, and I want to know if you’re dead or alive from one day to the next. It’s either this, or I have you sent home, gagged and bound, in the State Department’s diplomatic bag.”

His speech had made her angry – he could see it – but it had also made her feel guilt and he wasn’t above using that if it bought him a little peace of mind.

“Okay,” she sighed “Explain it to me again.”

“These comm. units can send encrypted text messages from anywhere in the world. You have to key in a 10-digit pass code to unlock it. You type your message and send just like a cell phone but prior to transmission the message becomes encrypted and only the receiving unit can decode the message. These are dedicated units, which means that only the pair can communicate with each other. If one is lost, the other is useless. As I said before, the unit’s signal is scrambled and Garcia tells me that even locating the satellite that transmits the signal would take some high-grade hacker skills. It’s the safest, most anonymous way to communicate with another person.”

Emily looked at the unit dubiously and then at him.

“Look, do you want me to say it out loud? Okay…” He was frustrated and tired. This day was starting to feel like more than he could handle. “Here it is: I really care about you. I don’t know what that means to you – if anything – but I _need_ this.” He pointed to the comm. units. “It is the only way that I will be able to sleep at night. It is also the very least that you could do considering that you refuse to change your mind about what is, quite possibly, the stupidest idea that your remarkable mind has ever conjured up _and_ that you refuse my help entirely. By the way, considering that I’m a federal law enforcement agent in possession of a ridiculous amount of profiling knowledge, that refusal is sort of an unexpected kick in the teeth on top of everything else.”

Emily had the good sense to look abashed, but it didn’t stop the anger vibrating through him. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. “All I’m asking of you is one message per 24 hours, Emily. Just to let me know that you’re okay.”

“Okay.” Her voice was very quiet.

“Thank you.” He rubbed his temples.

“You okay?”

“Just tired.” He looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. “It’s late. Too late to find a decent hotel. Would it be okay if I crashed on your couch?”

“That thing is a torture device. You can take my bed.” He was about to object when she stopped him with a wave of her hand. “No arguments. I’m leaving early in the morning anyway and will probably stay up late making sure that every loose end is tied off.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Yes. My leads here dried up about a week ago. I made the decision to leave then but had to get some more current intel in order to decide where to jump to next.”

She was as matter-of-fact as if they were in a case briefing, but the revelation knocked the wind from him. If he had been a day later, if he had become lost and decided to find a hotel instead of pushing on… he’d have missed her. He would have scratched Marion Laurent off the list and moved on until there was no one left to seek out. He would have had no choice but to return to D.C. and accept that she was gone for good. He was finding it hard to breathe all of a sudden.

“Spencer?” She looked like she had suddenly realized what he was thinking about and reached out for him.

“So many ways that this course of events could have resolved itself…” He rubbed his temple again. “Sometimes the infinitely multiplying possibilities swirl around like galaxies in my head. How one person navigates through all of that… randomness… and still manages to get some small semblance of what they set out for in the first place is a mystery that I can’t seem to figure out. It’s chance. The element of chance frightens me.”

She placed her hand over his against his temple. “You’re really tired, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“Come on. Time for bed.” Her hand clasped his and led him from the kitchen through the darkened house until they reached the bedroom. She left him at the threshold and went to the wardrobe, removed some clothes, and presented them to him.

“These look like they’ll fit you. They were here when I moved in.”

“Thank you.” His pulse was hammering inside him. He couldn’t help it; being this close to her, in the room where she slept, with the twilight softening all of her edges…

She leaned forward and kissed him. It wasn’t like the one in the kitchen. It was familiar and intimate, but also delicate as if she was afraid to offer more. He stroked her face, drawing her in further as he kissed her back. Eventually their lips parted but their faces hovered before one another, foreheads touching and lips brushing each other here and there.

“The element of chance has its upside, you know.” She whispered.

He pushed away ever so slightly. “I can’t, Em.”

Her head tilted in the darkness and he wondered if she was blushing like he thought she might be. “I wouldn’t be able to walk away from you tomorrow if I did.”

“Always the gentleman.” She huffed.

“I guess. But when this is all over, if you come back to D.C. and… if you still feel this way… I think that you could anticipate an entirely different reaction.” He kissed her cheek and felt her muscles contract into a grudging smile. That would do for now.

“Okay, well…” she pulled away and backed towards the door, “Goodnight, Spencer.”

“Goodnight, Emily.” He whispered but she was already gone.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The light was the same but he knew that time had passed; his body told him so. For a split second he wasn’t sure where he was but then he smelled her. And then he felt her. Warmth radiated up his back and the light pressure of her arm weighed along his hip. He couldn’t find a memory of her coming to bed with him, let alone one of something more. He turned slowly and saw that she was fully clothed, as was he. He let out a breath, but he wasn’t sure if it was relief. Her eyes flickered and then blinked as they tried to focus.

“Hi. Sleep okay?”

“I think so…”

She slowly smiled and then chuckled into her pillow. “Relax, your honor remains intact. You didn’t expect _me_ to sleep on the torture device, did you?”

He watched her face as she laughed and talked without the practiced disguises that she wore so often. A warmth filled him that he had not experienced in a long time: happiness. She started to blush under his gaze.

“What is it?”

“I was just thinking that if we weren’t going our separate ways today and if there wasn’t a significant probability that we’d never see each other again, this would rate as one of my favorite moments.”

She just stared at him, and he thought that maybe he had pushed it too far too soon. “What kind of rating?” she asked. “Would it make your top 10?”

He smiled one of those goofy grins that he tried to keep under wraps. “Definitely. But, in conjunction with that smile that you just flashed me, it probably cracks the top 5.”

“Score!” He watched as her playfulness melted back into the reality of the coming day. He quickly turned away before he saw anymore and got out of bed.

“We should set up some ground rules. For the comm. units.” He moved around the room quickly, collecting his clothes. He ducked out of the shirt that she gave him and into his dress shirt before he even thought about preserving his modesty.

“Okay… so, no locations. It’s better if I don’t know where you are. If you need to provide details, keep them vague. It’s also safer if we don’t use our names in our messages – we should always assume that someone is intercepting them.”

“But you said that that wasn’t possible.”

“It isn’t but no system is infallible. I’m not willing to risk your safety on some industrial designer’s hubris, are you?”

“You have a point there.”

“I always have a point.” He ducked behind the bedroom door to change his pants and felt like an idiot for doing it. “We should also have an emergency code – just in case – something like ‘Sergio is sick’… if you type that I’ll call in the cavalry.” 

“Okay, what’s your emergency code?”

“Why would I need one? I’ll be in D.C.”

“Bad things happen everywhere, Spencer.”

He came over and sat on her side of the bed. “This is about you and your safety, not me. If something bad happens to me I’ll just say so. Besides, I’ll have the whole team for support in D.C. You’re out here alone – that’s what I’m worried about.”

“That’s flattering – and a bit condescending – but also unnecessary. I can take care of myself… you should stop worrying.”

“That’s not going to happen so learn to live with it.” He stood abruptly and left the room.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dawn was beginning to light up the cottage as Reid made his way to the door with his bag in hand. She followed him silently wishing that there were any way in the world to make up for all of the mistakes that she had made in the last day. This goodbye felt like a break-up; the kind where both parties were soaked with regret but just couldn’t see a way past their problems. _Good luck and have a great life._ At the door he turned to face her. He was holding it together and she couldn’t help but feel proud of him for that. He’d laid himself on the line for her and had handled her ultimatum with grace; she didn’t think that she would have been as generous if their roles were reversed. He must have been holding on to some powerful feelings in order to make this work. The thought made her stomach jump a little.

She was surprised at how much his rebuff the previous evening had hurt her. He’d made the right decision, but it still left her feeling unsteady that he could want her and refuse her at the same time. She got the feeling that having an affair with Spencer Reid would be full of surprises like that. She was momentarily flooded with the desire to experience that; she wanted to be surprised and disturbed by him. But what if she’d never get the chance now? She tried to peer through the rolling chaos that was the possible outcomes to her hunt for Doyle, and couldn’t find a clear path. Reid was right: chance is terrifying. 

“So, we’re agreed: every night at midnight, D.C. time…”

He nodded. He was already wearing his sunglasses and she wondered if his head was bothering him or whether he just needed something between them.

“Remember that I’m out there, Em. If you need me, I’ll come for you, wherever you are.”

Her stomach somersaulted. _Jesus, Spence, quit making this so hard…_ She felt her cheeks flush again, and he twitched, deciding whether or not to finally ask about it.

“You blushed again.” He pointed towards her. “Why?”

“You keep calling me ‘Em’. Only my Dad ever called me that.”

“Oh… umm, I’m sorry.” He rocked back on his heels awkwardly. “I won’t do it again.”

“No. I-I like it. That’s why I blush.”

“Oh.”

They stood staring at each other like a pair of nervous teenagers on prom night. _Except he was 13 when he graduated high school and probably wouldn’t have tried to grope you in the backseat of a Datsun _, she thought. _Wow, are you really talking to yourself when you should be talking to him?___ His lips thinned into a nervous smile as he nodded and opened the front door to leave.

“I’m coming back, Spencer.” She blurted. “I know that you don’t understand or even approve of what I’m doing, but I _have_ to do it. And I’m _going_ to succeed. I’m coming back because I’m not letting chance determine my future.”

She grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Screw fear. You’ll see me again, I promise.”

He moved closer to her and looked as if he was going to say something but then changed his mind. He squeezed her hand back and nodded again. Then, with a calmness that she envied, he turned on his heel, got into his car and drove away.


	5. Secrets, Doubt, and Delay

It didn’t matter how good the trainees were, there were always a handful that were more interested in the salacious details of famous cases than in the serious business of catching suspects. Reid tried to be patient while teaching; he’d had many a teacher who wasn’t and found the paradigm less than productive. But sometimes he just wanted to throw a textbook at them.

“In the Foyet case we _did_ profile that he would insert himself into the investigation, which is an ear marker for this type of psychopathology. We just didn’t anticipate to what lengths he would go to become a part of the process. Posing as an actual victim, so early on in the case, was something that none of us had seen before.”

Trainee Bishop was pestering him again - first about Hankel and then about Foyet. They were hopelessly off topic now. He’d seen the type before: intelligent enough to pass muster in the Bureau, but also just enough narcissism and ambition to make himself a liability to any team situation that he was placed within.

“This is an excellent example of what I was speaking of earlier.” Reid continued, trying to get back to the focus of his lecture. “Successful profiling comes from comprehensive knowledge of psychological archetypes, the breakdown of pathologies, and knowledge of stressors and environment. Like it or not, we can all be categorized to some degree. But, this knowledge cannot be static - as humans adapt within their own categories to make unique profiles for themselves, we must adapt to the unexpected as well. The profiles, the textbooks, the case files… these are all just tools. Allow your interpretation of the evidence to be elastic and try not to dismiss something simply because it doesn’t fit the profile.”

“But in the end, it wasn’t the profile that caught Foyet.” Trainee Bishop interrupted. “He came to _you_. It was his personal connection to S.S.A. Hotchner that ended the case: instinct over pathology.”

Reid rubbed his temples. “That was one case.”

“What about Frank Breitkopf and Agent Gideon, you and Hankel, or even Ian Doyle and Agent Prentiss? I understand that case is still open…”

“So, given this handful of aberrant UNSUBs, you have extrapolated that personal investment in a case should be on equal footing with an encyclopedic understanding of psychopathologies?” Reid was getting angry is spite of his best efforts.

Bishop shot him a winning grin and looked around the lecture hall to gage whether he had the popular vote or not. “Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m saying”

“Bishop, that theory is so ridiculous that I should ignore it outright and move on, but being both a genius and your teacher and going to do the math for you on this one.” Reid stepped out from behind the lectern and fixed Bishop with a paralytic look. “I have worked 1,437 cases in my seven years with the Bureau, and of those 1,437 cases, my team has either closed or achieved a conviction 93% of the time. By your own example of 3 aberrant cases out of 1,437, ‘vibing’ your way to closure through personal involvement would account for just over 0.2% of all cases worked. Not only would your theory account for a spectacular fail rate for the other 1,434 cases, but also in those 3 cases agents were injured or killed in the process of apprehending the UNSUB.”

Reid stepped to within 3 feet of Bishop. “Personal investment is the quickest way to get someone killed in the field. We profile in teams to gain perspective, to benefit from a wider pool of knowledge, and - most importantly - to protect one another. It’s not like the movies, Bishop, there’s no room for lone wolves in this job. It’s about analysis and extrapolation, not achieving some sort of Vulcan mind meld with your suspect.”

Reid stopped and looked up at the silent stares from the rest of the lecture hall. “This isn’t magic - its science. The tools that you learn here and in these books can save lives. But only if you are intelligent enough to use them properly. Those of you who share Bishop’s point of view are entitled to your opinion, but I suggest that you join a local police force instead where that sort of thinking is encouraged. I guarantee you that my team and I will outperform and outlive you all.”

He walked back to the lectern and took off his glasses. “So, what’s it going to be? Nerdy, effective, team-playing FBI agent, or impulsive cop who died because he let his guts do his thinking for him?”

Just then, the lecture buzzer sounded and students began to pack up for their next class before any had a chance to weigh their options. Reid closed his lecture notes on his laptop and put his glasses back on, sighing at the ineffectualness of his little rant.

“Read pages 234 through 345 for Friday, please. We’re moving on to paraphilias.”

After he packed up his satchel, Reid noticed that Bishop and a few of his followers had remained behind.

“Dr. Reid, I apologize if I struck a nerve this afternoon…”

“Bishop, this isn’t about that.” Reid huffed as he waved the group closer. “You’re here to learn, so open your mind a bit, all right? I have experience and you don’t - when I tell you that some things work and others don’t, it’s not a theory and you should pay attention. If you don’t succeed in this class, you won’t get into the BAU. If you take away only two things from this class it should be that you _need_ to know the materials, and that you _need_ to be a team player.”

Bishop looked suitably chastened.

“And there’s something else… something that I didn’t want to say in front of the rest of the class.” The group perked up a bit. “When you get personally involved in these types of cases, it stays with you. Little parts of yourself get ripped away to make room for the crime scenes and the victims that you can’t forget. It doesn’t feel like much at first, but the more you see, the less whole you become. You’ll sacrifice your social life, your family… and its murder on relationships. People are horrified by it and the more that you start to think like an UNSUB, the more people will be horrified by you.”

Reid’s mind suddenly conjured up an image of Emily and his heart seized in a way in which he was becoming sadly familiar. “Your teammates will save you in more ways than one. They’ll have your back but they’ll also understand you. You’ll come to need those people more than you can possibly imagine… they’ll become the most important connection that you’ll ever have and you’ll do anything for them.”

He slung his satchel over his shoulder, suddenly more tired than he could ever recall being before. “There’s nothing glamorous about it and if you’re not strong, or unprepared, it’ll break you. This job isn’t like working bank robbery or fraud or white-collar crime; it is literally life and death every day. If you aren’t ready for that, and ready to trust a team, you shouldn’t be here. It’s something that you should all think about.”

He pushed through the group and headed for the exit.

“Don’t forget to do the reading.” He called over his shoulder as he left.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At first the messages had been awkward and brief; she was still angry with him for blackmailing her. But soon they became humorous, even playful as he suspected that the communication turned into a daily necessity for both of them. He found himself counting down the hours to midnight earlier and earlier each day.

June 29

_**[ What’s the heaviest element on Earth? ]** _

_**\-- osmium is the densest, uranium is the heaviest. Why? --** _

_**[ Im playing bar trivia. What was the code name given to Windows 95? ]** _

_**\-- Shouldn’t U B spying rite now? --** _

_**[ Quickly! I have 2 translate it into Turkish ]** _

_**\-- The Chicago Project --** _

_**[ How do u kno this stuff? OK - made it 2 final round - if we win this we get t shirts. What do you kno about the Han Dynasty? ]** _

_**\-- Lay it on me --** _

July 18

_**\-- What R U up to? --** _

_**[ sleeping. time zones dude! ]** _

_**\-- Dude? And how am I supposed to know what time zone U R N? --** _

_**[ i call anyone dude who wakes me up this early w/out breakfast, expensive jewelry or sex ]** _

_**[ what did u want anyway? am awake now ]** _

_**[ hello? ]** _

_**\-- Sorry. Was writing that list of permissible awakenings down for future reference --** _

August 31

_**\-- Tell me something I don’t kno about U --** _

_**[ I love those fast-talking high-pants detective movies from the 40s ]** _

_**\-- That explains a lot --** _

_**[ ??? ]** _

_**\-- I guess that I wear my pants a little high on my waist… --** _

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reid’s phone buzzed.

_Meet me for a drink? – DM_

He blinked and rubbed his temple. The pain wasn’t too bad but it wasn’t advisable to drink while he was having ‘an episode’. He looked over at the glowing screen of his laptop and realized that he had been working on the same sentence for 27 minutes. His dashboard clock read 10:26p.m. There was still some time before Emily checked in.

He picked up his phone and typed; his lecture presentation could wait.

_Sure. Where?_

_Usual place. I’m already here – DM_

This should be interesting, he thought as he pocketed his phone, keys, and grabbed a jacket before heading out.

……

The bar was a D.C. classic. It was a strange mix of the traditional Irish pub and 1920s speakeasy. It was dark with warm upholstered alcoves for a discreet rendezvous or nefarious dealings. It also featured one of the longest oak bars in Virginia, which is where Reid found Morgan nursing a Maker’s Mark.

“Hey there, stranger” Morgan smiled, all sparkling eyes and teeth. “I was starting to think that I’d never hear from you again. And – look – I almost missed a new haircut…”

Reid shrugged, slid onto a bar stool next to him and let the haircut thing go. A beefy bartender strode up and asked for his order while eyeing Morgan covertly. Morgan gave him the same smile as he had given Reid; charm for everyone this evening.

“A pint of Sam Adams.”

“Beer?” Morgan looked horrified.

“I have to teach in the morning.”

“Oh, that’s right – I heard that you were doing a seminar series at the Academy…” He eyed Reid. “So, this leave of yours might be permanent, huh?”

The bartender returned with Reid’s pint and a lopsided smile for Morgan.

“Have you been teasing the help again, Morgan?” he nodded towards the bartender as he wandered down the bar to check his other customers.

“Don’t do that, kid. You know that Garcia owns my ass… answer my question.”

Reid couldn’t meet his friend’s stare. “Nothing’s set in stone yet. I’m fielding offers – that’s all.”

Morgan didn’t speak for a long time and finally Reid was forced to look at him. He wasn’t drunk. Like most things in Morgan’s life, he was very disciplined about alcohol. He was a social chameleon – which made him an excellent profiler – but he didn’t fall into the typical addictive traps that plagued most law enforcement types. His only uncontrollable desire was the thrill of the chase, which is why he would never leave the Bureau and why he couldn’t understand anyone else’s decision to do so. He rotated his glass by quarter turns at regular intervals. After 3 full rotations, he spoke.

“That must have been quite a vacation.”

Reid just stared back.

“Okay.” Morgan looked away. “Well, since you’re half out anyway, I’ve got an offer for you to consider.”

Reid leaned in slightly as Morgan turned back towards him.

“I’m trying to find Doyle – on my own time. I don’t know how it’ll play out if I catch up with him, but I figure that I owe it to Prentiss to make the effort. She would’ve done the same for me…”

Reid’s heart stopped for a split second as he scrambled to assemble a suitable poker face. _This really can’t be happening._ His life was about to become geometrically more complicated.

“His son is the key. Aside from revenge, his son is the only thing that matters to him. We know that Prentiss didn’t kill Declan; she must have hid him. So, this leads me to two questions: does Doyle know that his son is alive, and, where did Prentiss stash him?”

Reid knew that he had to say something but couldn’t think of what. Morgan looked up at him and leaned in a little closer, his eyes strangely glossy.

“I know that what happened to Prentiss is eating away at you, kid. It’s tearing me up too. I can’t let it go. Finding Doyle won’t make the pain any better, but we can still give her memory some justice. I _need_ to do that for her, Reid, but I can’t do it alone.”

Morgan slid his hand, palm up, across the bar towards Reid. “Will you help me?”

Reid looked down at Morgan’s hand and marveled at how two agents after the same goal could handle things so differently. Morgan, alpha-male type and self-sustaining force, asked for help while Emily, more empathic and driven by success, refused it in any form. The comparison left a sour taste in the back of his throat as part of him whispered that she didn’t trust him, and never would. He wanted her back so badly that it almost felt like chasing an unattainable high, but he was having doubts that she wanted to come back at all. It stung worse than anything he had previously experienced. Just then his interior jacket pocket vibrated.

_**[ R U up? ]** _

“Nice phone.” Morgan said. 

“Yeah, I thought that I should get a personal one in case I resign from the Bureau…” Reid looked up at Morgan. “I gotta take this, I’m sorry.”

“Booty call?”

Reid smirked at Morgan and his arched eyebrow. “Something like that.”

“That vacation changed you, kid.” Morgan took a sip from his glass. Reid’s beer remained untouched in front of him as he typed.

_**\-- Out with DM. BRB. --** _

“Not really. It just made me aware of how time will end up making the decisions that you’re too frightened to make yourself.” Reid pocketed his comm. device and laid some money on the bar for the bill. “Sorry about bailing on you. And to answer your question, I’m in on the Doyle problem. Stop by my place tomorrow after work and we’ll look at what we have.”

“You’re sure playing your cards close to the vest these days…”

“A reminder never to play poker with me.” He smiled at Morgan as he turned to go. “But I’m not bluffing today so you don’t have anything to worry about.”

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I still say that we should focus on local safe house possibilities - she’d want to keep the kid close to her.”

“You may have a point - and you know how sexy I find that, sugar - but that’s still a lot of land deeds, rental agreements, holding companies, and other assorted aliases to run down.”

Garcia winked at Morgan over her pink coffee mug and he smiled back from the opposite side of Reid’s couch. Reid wondered if they had ever been together, or if they ever would be. Their banter seemed very satisfying and he postulated that _the tease_ was the secret for them, not the consummation. He suddenly felt that they were much smarter than he was. He leaned forward on the couch to refocus the conversation.

“Wouldn’t it be too much of a risk to keep Declan in the same city where she worked? She wasn’t taking care of him personally… presumably she hired a professionally trained guardian which means that she could hide him anywhere and greater distance implies a greater sense of security.”

Morgan shook his head. “You knew her: a control freak. And she always tried to keep the people that she loved close to her…”

Reid made a sarcastic noise before he could stop himself that was thankfully ignored by both of his guests. Bitterness was starting to seep into unexpected aspects of his life of late. It had been four months since he had left Emily in France and, though her messages were vague, she seemed no closer to catching Doyle. Meanwhile, Morgan’s unofficial manhunt was proceeding slowly in the direction of Doyle’s son. The twosome had quickly included Garcia once Morgan had realized the scale of data analysis that would have to be done. Garcia hadn’t been hard to convince and made a passing comment about how Morgan wouldn’t be able to match his socks without her.

Reid started to feel like an observer in his own life. It probably had something to do with all of the secrets he was keeping. He concealed Emily from the team, he concealed Morgan’s investigation from Emily, he hid his comm. unit from Garcia, he deflected any inquiries from Hotch or J.J. entirely, and he hid his health issues from them all. He was no longer completely honest with anyone. Even his N.A. sponsor was given an altered version of the truth, but if he guessed it, he probably just assumed that Reid was using again. God knows he could’ve used a little oblivion at the moment. 

“I think that, in light of your beloved hacker’s sleep deprivation, we should concentrate locally and then expand the search if we come up empty.” Garcia chimed in. “You both make good observations but I can only do so much after hours and off the grid.”

Reid nodded. He often forgot that Morgan and Garcia also handled an active caseload on top of spending evenings at his place hunting cyberspace for signs of Doyle. No longer an active field agent, his world had contracted considerably. His lectures at Quantico didn’t begin until noon and, while he consulted on a few active cases, he spent most of his free time trying to manage his headaches. Two ER visits in the last three weeks told him that this was one secret that he wouldn’t able to hide for much longer.

His pant pocket vibrated.

“I need a refill.” He rose and headed for the kitchen with his coffee mug. “You guys need anything?”

“It’s midnight, kid. You’ll never get any sleep if you keep mainlining caffeine like that…” Morgan called after him.

“Maybe he doesn’t want to sleep, Derek.” Garcia said quietly. “Look at him: he’s a wreck.”

….

_**[ Hi. ]** _

_**\-- Where R U 2nite? --** _

_**[ That’s funny ]** _

_**\-- I want 2 kno where U R --** _

_**[ C’mon… ]** _

_**\-- Tell me --** _

_**[ U kno I can’t ]** _

_**\-- Im tired of this --** _

_**[ Tired of what? ]** _

_**\-- Secrets --** _

_**[ U set up the rules, not me ]** _

_**\-- U think that I set up the rules? We’ve been doing this ur way from the beginning --** _

_**[ S, what’s wrong? Why R U doing this? ]** _

Reid heard footsteps behind him and pocketed the comm. unit. He turned with a fresh mug of coffee in hand to see Garcia looking concerned.

“I think that Morgan and I are going to call it a night.”

“Sure, sure.” Reid nodded and smiled. “Bad guys to catch in the morning…”

Garcia stepped towards him and took his hand in hers. “I wish that you’d come back to work, honey. We need you and I think that it would be good for you to have a distraction.”

He felt a lump rise into his throat. She was right - he missed the work and he could certainly benefit from distraction - but the headaches were becoming unmanageable. He didn’t want to be restricted to desk duty and he didn’t want to be the weak link in the field.

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

He felt her hand move to his face, smoothing the surface of his cheek. He looked into her eyes and saw the undisguised affection that she had for him. He let out a deep sigh; she was like a tonic.

“I’m sorry, Reid. I should’ve been there more for you. I didn’t see it…”

“See what?”

“You didn’t just love her,” She took a breath and blinked. Her eyes were getting glassy. “You were _in love_ with her.”

He just stared at Garcia, speechless. When he eventually nodded and allowed her to hold him, he didn’t think about anything. Later he would qualify it as one secret that he was no longer interested in keeping. She held him close for a long time and he relished every second of it. When she let him go, he kissed her lightly on both cheeks in gratitude. _I love these people_ , he thought as she tried to wipe away her tears.

“Don’t let Morgan see you like this. He’ll think that I made you cry.”

“You _did_ , Special Agent Obvious.” She smiled as she dabbed at her face. “I’ll see you tomorrow night. Try and get some sleep, honey.”

After Morgan and Garcia left, he pulled the comm. unit from his pocket. There were several unread messages for him, but he logged off without looking at them.


	6. Words Are Not Enough

September 23

_**[ R U there? ]** _

September 24

_**[ Hey where R U? ]** _

September 27

_**[ This isn’t funny. Answer me. ]** _

September 30

_**[ At least tell me what I did? ]** _

October 2

_**[ U R being childish, S. ]** _

October 5

_**[ Please stop this. Just let me kno that UROK ]** _

_**\-- √ --** _

_**[ TALK 2 ME! ]** _

_**[ hello? ]** _

October 9

_**[ I made this mess - I kno I did - & I forced U 2 go along with it. I took advantage of U. I used U. ]** _

_**[ I AM SORRY ]** _

_**[ Its all out of control now. I don’t know how 2 fix it. U were rite & I should have trusted U ]** _

_**[ please talk 2 me. Im alone & scared & I can’t do this w/out U ]** _

_**\-- Im here --** _

_**[ THANK U ]** _

_**\-- Even when Im angry at U Im always here --** _

_**[ I don’t deserve 2 have U b here 4 me ]** _

_**\-- A liar and an addict? We r sides of the same coin. What could b more fitting? --** _

_**[ Is that how U see us? ]** _

_**\-- I see us as porcupines trying to mate --** _

_**[ ??? ]** _

_**\-- They do it carefully. Or unsuccessfully. --** _

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The heat was obscene, even at night. She felt that if she unzipped her skin and stepped out of it, her bones would start sweating. She looked through her night vision telephoto lens and saw that her mark was still at it with his two ‘guests’. She sighed with disgust and settled into her chair for another long night. She couldn’t remember the last time that she’d been properly laid; not just fucked, but righteously made love to with the butterflies and the intense feelings and all of the great and terrible things that accompanied it. It was just sad, really: evil people had become her most committed relationship.

She looked at the clock on the wall of her sweltering squat and thought about Reid. There were times when he was all that she thought about, and then there were other times when she didn’t consider him at all. The disparity upset her. She wasn’t blind to her tendency to compartmentalize, but she didn’t know what it meant in this case. She wanted him – in fact, if he had been there in that moment, she might have torn him to pieces with want. But she wasn’t sure about the rest. He had been open about how he felt and it scared her. She was scared about coming to feel the same way about him, and she was scared that part of her was doing its best to sabotage any hope of that happening.

She’d also felt him pulling back in the last few weeks. His messages would range from whimsical to testy, and then back again. She sensed him hiding things from her that had nothing to do with the necessity of their covert communication. So maybe fate was making her decision about him for her. Wasn’t she the one who had told him that she wasn’t going to let chance and fear stand in her way? Maybe he sensed that her word was as reliable as ever…

She looked through the lens again and wondered how hookers could make such an ugly, lowlife feel like the sexiest creature alive. _Well, why not ask yourself, Emily? How did you make Doyle come like a freight train, huh?_ She shook her head and went to the filthy kitchenette to fetch a bottle of cheap Chianti. _Stop it. I did what I was ordered to do._

She sat down behind her tripod again and poured herself a liberal amount of wine. Her comm. unit was sitting on the table. She looked at the clock again; it was early but she could still try him. _Do you really believe that he’d still want you if he knew how it was with Doyle? Who the hell are you kidding?_

“It wouldn’t matter if he knew that he meant more to me.” She said aloud.

_Does he know that? I don’t think that you believe that anyway…_

“Shut up.”

She took a large gulp of the throat-burning Chianti and reached for the comm. unit. Her hands shook as she entered her pass code.

Her opening message was returned within a few minutes.

_**\-- U R early tonight. RUOK? –** _

_**[ Yes. On a stakeout. Bored as hell. U? ]** _

_**\-- Working a case. Not making much headway. Frustrated. --** _

Her mind went where she didn’t want it to go. _Tell him you’re frustrated too. Tell him that you’re afraid of never catching Doyle and never making it home again. Tell him that you want him so much right now that you’d fuck him over this glorified telephone if you could. Tell him that you’re afraid your secrets are destroying you._

She drank down another gulp of wine and typed.

_**[ Tell me a secret ]** _

There was a long enough pause that she wondered how he had construed her request. Outside she heard a soft rain start to fall as cars whispered through the street at odd intervals. Finally, the unit vibrated.

_**\-- RU drunk? --** _

_**[ Im drinking, not drunk. R U trying to get out of telling me a secret? ]** _

_**\-- No, but if U were drunk I mite not have 2 worry about what U mite remember 2morrow --** _

_**[ LOL. Pretend that Im really drunk. I want a doozy. ]** _

Again, the comm. unit went silent for a long time.

“C’mon, Reid, give me something.” She murmured as she took another drink. “How bad could your secret life be, anyway?”

The unit vibrated as she checked in on the carnal progress of her mark.

_**\-- I got my hands on some dilaudid --** _

Her heart stopped. _Wasn’t expecting that, were you sweety?_ She tried to think of the best response when everything in her wanted to catch a cab to the airport and hop on the first flight back to D.C. Her hands shook again as she typed.

_**[ Tell me everything. ]** _

_**\-- The pain gets bad sometimes. Few wks after I got back I found a dealer. Ended up flushing it tho --** _

_**[ Why? ]** _

_**\-- U checked n as I was about 2 do it. I want U more than I want 2 get hi. --** _

She threw the unit across the table. Her heart was racing and she was shaking all over. She stood up and knocked her chair back as she paced the squalid room.

“What am I supposed to do with _that_ , Spencer?” she yelled at the comm. unit. “How can you tell me that when I’m halfway across the world? I can’t be responsible for your happiness… you don’t know me…”

The unit vibrated again.

_**\-- Im not making u my savior. Can’t make my sobriety about another person. Going 2 mtgs 2 work thru this. --** _

She sunk to her knees and leaned against the table while staring at the last message. Her limbs felt like water and her heart beat so rapidly that she was starting to feel nauseated. So here it was: compartmentalization be damned. She didn’t care about Doyle or the lead getting his brains fucked out across the street. She didn’t care about her safety or what would happen to her if she failed her assignment. She didn’t care about her family, or the team, her past, or even her future. Her focus had narrowed to the brilliant addict at the other end of this message and the pain that she was causing him. She had to admit that what she felt was more than want.

_**[ You frighten me ]** _

_**\-- You asked --** _

_**[ Yeah but I was hoping 4 sum sexting ]** _

_**\-- My bad --** _

She thought for a long time about what she should say next. She felt that she had to repay his honesty, but forthrightness hadn’t been her stock in trade lately.

_**[ I want 2 b with U ]** _

She sent it, then quickly added:

_**[ but Im not sure that Im any good 4 U ]** _

The unit was silent for so long that she thought that he was gone for the evening. She drained her glass and refilled it; might as well deal with this situation in the time-honored fashion. Over an hour passed before the unit vibrated again.

_**\-- That’s not a secret that Im interested in. Tell me 1 that will really shock me. --** _

She couldn’t help but laugh out loud at his message.

“We’ll see how you feel about it when I show up on your doorstep, Dr. Genius…” She typed into the unit and hit send, then logged out.

_**[ OK hows this? Im going 2 c U very soon ]** _

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At the gate in the Santiago de Compostela airport, her phone chimed. She used it so little; she almost forgot that she had it. A new message blinked onscreen:

* Message from Substation Delta * 

Date: November 17, 2011  
To: E. Prentiss  
From: J. Castillo, Station Chief - Spain

The following is forwarded from Washington Station Chief Millard:

S.S.A. Hotchner wishes to inform you of reliable intelligence of Ian Doyle’s return to the United States. Credible threat to a family member. Advises immediate return.

\----- END MESSAGE -----

 

She deleted the message, removed the SIM card and snapped it in two. She slipped the dead phone into her carry-on and tried to imagine that the past nine months had been a dream from which she was about to awaken.


	7. Crows Come To Roost

Reid’s phone buzzed as he headed towards his ancient Volkswagen in the Quantico car park. The caller ID read ‘Hotch’, and he realized that he hadn’t talked to his boss in 68 days.

“Hey, Hotch.” He tried to sound upbeat despite his burgeoning headache.

“Hello, Reid. How are you doing? How’s the teaching suiting you?”

“Fine, I guess.” Reid placed his satchel and laptop bag on the roof of his car and leaned against the door watching as student cars slowly emptied from the lot. “It’s a different kind of challenge. It’s showing up the holes in my social skills, that’s for sure…”

“That’s not true. I saw how you handled the Bishop kid. Those trainees could do a lot worse than learning the mechanics from you, Reid.”

“You sat in on one of my lectures?” Who would’ve thought that Hotch had the time?

“I was concerned about you. I haven’t seen much of you since you returned from Europe.”

“Y-yes… I know. And you’ve been very patient about the length of my absence.” Reid rocked back on his heels even though no one was there to see his awkwardness. “I-I know that I have to make a decision, one way or the other, about my future with the BAU…”

“We can talk about that later.” Hotch interrupted. “I called because there is a development in the Doyle case and I wanted to know if you were available to participate actively on this one. The team will be assembling at 8a.m. tomorrow for a briefing… I thought that you would like to be there.”

“Development? What kind of development?” Reid swallowed hard. Had Morgan gone to Hotch with their findings about Declan? It didn’t seem likely.

“Three children have been kidnapped and murdered in the last 10 days in the D.C. area. They were all from wealthy families, well protected, the same age, and they were all Irish nationals.” Hotch waited a beat and then added, “And the Canadian intelligence service reported a person fitting Doyle’s description may have crossed the border into Michigan three days ago.”

“You’re thinking that someone is targeting children who could be Declan to draw Doyle out.”

“Or they are trying to send him a message. Either way, it’s a serial and in our backyard, which gives us jurisdiction.”

“Three days!” Reid huffed. “He could be anywhere by now…”

“I doubt it. This is his son… he won’t bother being cagey, he’ll just come straight for him.” Hotch paused as if to say something, and then continued, “So, I’ll see you tomorrow at 8?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Hotch hung up without saying goodbye.

Reid slouched against his car in disbelief. The sun was just starting to set and the skyline was painted in slowly darkening pastels. He waited until the rose turned to mauve, and then to light indigo before he stirred himself and dialed a number from his call list.

“Hey, kid, what’s up?” Morgan answered.

“Hotch just called me about the briefing tomorrow.” He sighed. “We’ve got to come clean with what we’ve got.”

“Yeah, I was about to call you. I’ve been thinking the same thing…”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reid sat at his kitchen table cleaning his .38. It had become a form of meditation for him over the past nine months, and he suspected that he possessed one of the cleanest guns in the Bureau as a result. Gun maintenance and his weekly visits to the shooting range had become an unexpected release for him during his more difficult moments, and he wished that he had discovered these benefits earlier in his career. It certainly would have saved him a lot of grief and uncomfortable ribbing from his fellow agents. 

He looked out his studio windows to see that the weather had turned cold and a light snow was falling over the city. It wouldn’t last - D.C. was still too warm for any accumulation at this time of year - but it made him pensive. He looked at the comm. unit on the table and wondered for the twentieth time how he should tell Emily about the Doyle development. If Hotch hadn’t told her, should he? He’d have to let her know what he, Morgan, and Garcia had discovered… His intricate web of secrets was starting to collapse in on itself.

He shook his head and tried to focus on the few facts that Hotch had given him. This was the best shot that anyone had had at getting Doyle since his attack on Emily, and Reid was determined to make the most of it. If they could get Doyle, they all had a chance to move on… whatever that entailed. 

He reached for the gun oil when the comm. unit vibrated. He looked at the kitchen clock. 9:45… she was very early this evening.

_**[ U home? ]** _

_**\-- Yes. Why so early? --** _

The comm. unit was quiet for nearly twenty minutes and Reid became concerned.

_**\-- RUOK? --** _

Reid stared at the unit, willing it to respond. After another fifteen minutes, it did.

_**[ Answer ur door. ]** _

_**\-- What? --** _

Almost immediately, someone knocked at his front door. His pulse kicked into overdrive and flooded his system with adrenaline. Something felt out of place to him and he was suddenly aware of his own vulnerability. The .38 lay in pieces on the table, so he went to the living room to retrieve his Glock 9mm back up that he stripped off when he’d returned from the firing range a few days earlier. It felt alien in his hands - he rarely practiced with it - but it would have to do. The knock sounded again, this time more insistently. In the kitchen, he heard the comm. unit vibrate against the table surface.

His pulse was thundering now and he could feel his heartbeat in his ears, his throat and his fingers. He took a couple of deep breaths to steady his instincts - just like he did at the range - and quickly turned out the lights in the living room. Luckily, the light in the hallway was already out so the front half of his studio was dark and unable to give his position away to the visitor beyond the front door. He slid forward along the wood floors in his bare feet, careful to avoid the squeaky joints and loose planks. When he reached the door, he flicked his safety off, took another deep breath, and opened it quickly keeping his body behind it.

Emily turned to face him, her eyes wide with surprise and the comm. unit in her hands as he caught her in mid-message. Her mouth opened but before she had a chance to speak, Reid grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into his hallway, slamming and locking the door in one quick move. He pushed her up against one wall of his narrow, dark hallway with his gun still in hand.

“Are you okay?” he rasped, his voice rough from the adrenaline spike. “What are you doing here?”

All he could think was that there was a good possibility that Doyle was in D.C., and now Emily was in D.C. as well. He didn’t want them in the same zip code. Suddenly all Reid wanted was to put a bullet between Doyle’s eyes and be done with it. He wanted to make sure that Emily was safe from that man for all time. He knew that he could do it too. Love could convince you to do terrible things.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Are _you_ okay?” Emily looked down at the Glock in his hand.

“Oh. Sorry.”

He flicked the safety back on and slid the gun onto the hall table beside them. He still had her pushed up against the wall, his hand clamped on her arm and his knee between her legs. He stared at her, taking in all of her features in what little light was left in the hallway. It had been six months since he had last seen her face and he realized that every time he thought of her, he saw her as she was in France. This Emily was paler, thinner, more worn, but no less stunning. He was close enough to see the small lines around her mouth and eyes that creased when she laughed. He wondered when she’d last laughed…

“Are you sure that you’re okay?” She whispered. Her voice seemed to quiver a little.

Her pupils dilated and he realized that he was very close to her. His first thought was to back away and give her some space, but instead he stepped closer until he could feel her breath on his face. She was breathing shallowly too, he noted. In contrast to her anxious respiration, her arm relaxed against his grip and she let one of her thighs lean against his.

“Yeah. I just got a little freaked out by all of this cloak and dagger stuff. That’s all.” He could taste her breath now: sharp coffee covered by wintergreen mints. He could smell her face cream - something that cosmetic manufacturers called ‘linen’ - and the subtle musk of the old leather jacket that she wore. He felt another adrenaline spike but knew that it had nothing to do with mortal fear this time.

“You’re here.” He mumbled. He desperately wanted to touch her hair. “Why are you here? How… when…”

“I just got in.” She breathed, and then she smiled leaning in enough to almost touch his lips with her own. “I came here directly from the airport.”

“You came here first…”

“I had to.”

Reid closed his eyes for a split second and let her whisper sink into him. “Tell me why.”

“Because of what you said that night in France.” She breathed. “I guess that I wanted to see if you still felt the same way or not. It’s been a while, so I wasn’t - ”

Reid grabbed the back of her neck and crushed her against him. He kissed her as they fell clumsily back against the wall, her thighs clamping around his knee as he pushed further into her. She gasped against him and he sucked in her lower lip. She responded by pressing herself as close to him as she could manage, her hands grappling in his hair. They exchanged positions, grasping and pulling against each other, fighting to get closer with their lips and teeth and fingers. Emily would break away from his lips in a gasp only to be angrily reclaimed by him moments later. She dug her rough nails in his neck and up under his shirt eliciting groans from him that were half pain and half pleasure. She changed positions suddenly forcing too much weight onto his bad knee and they collapsed into the side of the hall table as they tried to recover.

“Damn!” he mumbled against her.

“Knee?” she bit into his lower lip.

“Yes.” He tried to right the two of them but became distracted by what Emily had started doing with her tongue. He roughly pressed against her and heard the hall table scrape back along the floorboards.

“Bed?” she gasped.

He stepped away from her quickly and hauled her up from the table with both hands back into his arms. “This way.”

He walked backward along the hallway, one arm wrapped around her waist holding her against him, and the other skimming the edge of the wall beside them for balance. She laughed softly against his lips between kisses and he pulled up at the bedroom door.

“What’s funny?”

“I’ve been imagining what this moment would be like and I never thought that we would both be so eager as to almost do it in your front hallway.”

“I considered that scenario. But I’ve thought about a lot of different scenarios over time. Ones involving the bed seem to offer less risk of injury.”

“How many different scenarios?” she teased.

Reid gave her a serious look. “I’m a mathematician. When I say ‘a lot’ its probably safe to assume that the quantity is more than what the average person would consider. It seems a bit immodest to land on a number. I’d much rather show you, if that’s all right…”

He watched her intensely as she blushed in his arms. He felt a swell of power that was almost completely foreign to him. It was a rush to see that he held that kind of sway over her, if only for a moment. He smiled and kissed her.

“You’re so beautiful, Em.”

He did that on purpose so that he could see her blush again, but this time she ducked her eyes from him.

“Spence, I… I - ”

“Hey… hey,” He gently lifted her eyes to look at him again. “There’s no pressure here, okay? Listen… I probably shouldn’t say this, but… I love you… and that won’t change based on whether you love me too or if you say it back. It just _is_.”

He stopped and let that settle between them. “I want to be with you, and if you want that too, then let’s give this a try. But if you’re unsure, just be honest and say so. I can take it.”

She stared back at him for a moment, speechless. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Just lay your feelings out on the table like that?”

He sighed and settled his arms around her waist. “I guess… I feel like I’ve wasted a lot of time circling around the edges of how I feel about a lot of things. I was acting like protecting myself was more important than, potentially, being unbelievably happy. When you look at it like that, it just seems really counterproductive _not_ to lay yourself on the line.”

He stared at her and held his breath. Her hand rose and stroked the side of his face and then she leaned in and kissed him deeply.

“I’ll have to work on that kind of emotional honesty. But, I will say that I want to give us a try. I want that very much.”

A giddy sort of joy flowed through him and he felt himself smiling like an idiot. He didn’t care: Emily Prentiss - the real one - wanted him, and that was the best thing that he had discovered in a long time. Emily backed out of his arms and into the bedroom. She smiled and shrugged off her jacket, abandoning it to the floor.

“Now, can we get back to your list of scenarios, please?”

He stood, transfixed, in the doorway as she casually flicked off her shoes, unwound her silk scarf, and pulled her shirt over her head, tossing them away. She held his eyes as she unbuckled her belt and then slid her jeans down her legs, eventually stepping out of them. She ran a finger along the inside rim of her panties and studied his eyes. He wondered what she read there. All he felt was hunger, and he had no idea what that looked like on him. 

She quickly looped her index fingers into her underwear and slid them down her legs as well. Then she unhooked her bra - in the front, which seemed very practical to him - and tossed it to the ground. She stood there in front of his bed unflinching under his gaze. Emily might have had trouble with being emotionally bare, but she wasn’t afraid of being physically bare before him. He blushed suddenly, knowing what would have to come next.

“Now, you.” She nodded in his direction.

His desire turned into a hard lump in his throat. He somehow had hoped that it wouldn’t come to this: it would have been fine to strip in a hurried race to the bed, but he didn’t know if he could stand this naked scrutiny. He looked down at his feet and tried to assert a physical confidence that he didn’t feel. He had no idea how long this effort lasted before he felt her hands skim up his arms. He looked up and she leaned into him, her lips landing just below his ear.

“No pressure, remember?” She whispered. “But I’d like to help, if you’ll let me.”

She pulled back and he nodded silently to her. She ran her index fingers down the insides of his arms, skimming his biceps, his forearms, and circling around his wrists. Her hands moved to his torso where they brushed from front to back following ribs and muscle groups felt through his t-shirt. She repeated the motions over and over until they became almost meditative. He smiled as he realized what she was doing: desensitizing him to the ‘newness’ of being touched by someone else. He bent and kissed the side of her neck in silent thanks.

Her hands edged the hem of his shirt and then dipped to the skin underneath. He only jumped a little and he relaxed when he felt her giggle into his neck. She repeated the same process under his shirt and then quickly pulled it over his head. She tossed it away and looked up into his eyes, not at his body, and then pressed her chest into his and kissed him. He moaned a little and pressed himself closer. He felt her smile against his lips.

“No so bad, right?”

“There’s nothing about this situation that I would qualify as ‘bad’.” He mumbled against her cheek.

“In that case, do you want to do the next part yourself?”

He nodded and hooked his thumbs into the waist of his loose cotton pants. In an efficient move, he quickly removed his pants and boxers, and stood before her. He huffed and mentally tried to shake off his doubts - after all - it was too late to go back now. She pressed herself against the full length of him, trapping his erection between them. Her hands skimmed over his torso and back again, then moved down and around his butt. She kissed along the length of his neck - which was a long journey - and then down his collarbone to his suprasternal notch.

“Nope, there’s nothing about this that is bad…” She mumbled into his chest and squeezed him a little tighter.

“You’re a crafty woman.” He mused and he started to crabwalk the two of them back towards the bed.

“Only about the things that truly matter.”

She laughed but he stopped her with a searing kiss. “I’m glad that I matter.”

They hit the edge of the bed and his adrenaline ramped up again. He pulled her head back slightly and bit the side of her neck. She moaned which sent a jolt straight through him from head to toe. He pressed himself closer to her producing a pressure that was both dangerous and good at the same time.

“Get on the bed.”

She obeyed, propping herself up on her elbows to watch him. He crawled over her and gently pushed her back down. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close as they traded kisses. He pressed himself down against her and when his erection met her thighs she arched up into him and caused him to hiss against her neck. Faster than he could have imagined, one of her hands found him and lightly began to stroke his length. Another jolt flashed through him and he discovered himself moving in rhythm to her hands.

A moan that sounded pitiful to his ears escaped him, so he moved his mouth down to her breasts and gave it more suitable work to do. He nipped and suckled until he heard her moaning in a similar fashion. It didn’t seem so wrong if they were both doing it. He sucked and pulled and ground himself into her hands until the threat of soreness became too much. He pulled away from her grip slightly and her hand reached lower to cradle his balls. That particular jolt was too much and he quickly moved himself away. She made a concerned noise until he crawled back up and kissed her.

“Not yet.”

His hand snaked down her torso past her belly button, over her pelvic bone, and down between her legs. His fingers explored for a few moments and he smiled to himself: it was good to know that she was as excited as he was. She watched him and he watched as her expressions changed in accordance with his touch. He circled her and her eyes rolled back. He added a bit of pressure and her back arched off the bed as she moaned loudly. He was thrilled.

She called out his name in a sort of ragged question. He had a feeling that he understood, and smiled.

“Not yet.” He repeated.

He filed the half whine, half growl that his response elicited from her under ‘hot’. It was one of the most attractive things he had ever seen her do, and he was glad to have experienced it instead of imagining it.

Reid quickly moved further down her body and replaced his fingers with his mouth. He sucked and pulled as he had on her breasts and tried to decide which he enjoyed more, but it became clear which Emily preferred. Again, he was thrilled. He pushed his fingers into her as he intensified his oral efforts. Emily began to grind herself into him; he felt fingers in his hair pushing him downwards. Her moans became less coherent and louder, and soon he realized that some of them were coming from him. The vibrations seemed to intensify everything. Emily’s pelvis thrust towards him with greater force as he added a third finger inside and curved his hand upward to find her sweet spot. Sometimes it was a blessing to have long, articulate hands…

Emily started shouting his name in between cries of ‘now’. He pulled his mouth away from her and roughly turned her on her side. He pushed his fingers in further and lay his head along her hipbone as he watched her curl around his hand and ride it to her own rhythm.

“Not yet.” He moaned into her skin, but he feared that he was lying this time.

He let her guide him as she pushed herself closer and closer to her breaking point. He watched her face contort into pain that only comes from the denial of pleasure. She mouthed out unspeakable pleas to him as she arched and contracted in some battle to break free from invisible restraints. He kissed and bit her but was more fascinated by her face. Here was a moment in which she couldn’t disguise anything from him, and it felt better than any intimate moment that he had ever dreamed up with Perfect Emily. 

She suddenly slowed her thrusts and reached down to grab his wrist and pulled him away. He was confused. Had he hurt her? She took a deep breath and opened her eyes to stare at him. She was fighting for control and her eyes were glassy and wild.

“Spencer!” She gasped, and he understood.

He crawled up along her back and kissed her. “Okay.”

He pressed himself into her back and hissed as she pushed back against him creating an urgent pressure. He began to move himself, rubbing against the cleft of her bum as she continued to push back against him. _She’s so warm_ , he thought, _I could never have imagined this._

He shifted her so that he could loop an arm between her and the bed to wrap around her waist, then he scooted down and used his free hand to spread her thighs. He pushed himself into the newly created space and found her wet and much, much warmer. She rubbed herself up and down his length a few times until his moans matched hers again. She placed his head against her and, without thinking, he was in her. 

He moved upwards experimentally until they caught each other’s rhythm. His mind went completely blank as he pushed into her over and over and over. His hand twisted her hips around him until her sudden cries told him that he was in a good place. A hand gripped her waist as he began to pump in earnest. His legs grappled hers, his spine matched her own curve, he bit into her shoulder on one savage upward thrust… She ground against him and moaned his name until it ceased to be recognizable at all. He called out her name, once, in a broken voice and she grabbed his hand and guided him one last time to her clit. He thrust and pushed and rubbed against her until he shut down completely and his instincts took over. He felt her squeeze around him almost at the same time and he thought that he distantly heard her scream something. He smashed through something that he imagined was holding him back from her and let everything go in one blistering moment of pain. It never ceased to amaze him how great it felt to experience _that kind_ of pain with someone else. Let alone to experience it with her…

He clung to her, his pelvis still pumping feebly. They were both gasping as he idly rubbed her thigh. They lay together, connected, trying to calm their breathing. It was a long time before he managed a coherent thought. When he did, it was _I could never have dreamed that up_.

In time he gently pulled away. She still hadn’t said anything. He crawled up along her back and spooned against her, worried. He tried to wrap his arms around her and she turned to face him. Her eyes were teary.

“Em, did I do something wrong? Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head, no, and then leaned in for a quick kiss. “Don’t mind me - it’s been… well, it’s been a _really_ long time since… anyone thought about making me feel that good.”

That all sounded well and good but she was still crying. He was a little confused.

“I want you to know, Spence… I’m all in on this one.” She quickly wiped away a tear. “I have no idea how this is gonna work, but I’m all in… with you, okay?”

He felt a stupid grin march across his face and decided that it was good for her to see the joy that she gave him. Maybe it would convince her of her own worth someday…

“Okay, Em.”

He rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. His fingers traced invisible paths along her cheek, jaw, and lips as he dozed.

“I’m just going to rest my eyes for a second.” He said, but within minutes he was asleep.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She only slept for a few hours. The jetlag kicked in and she was suddenly wide awake at 3a.m. She moved in bed and he moved with her, his arms never leaving her. She looked at his silhouette beside her in the dark, his hair in a crazy tangle across the pillows. It had grown out since she had seen him in France - it was more like it was from the time before Ian Doyle ran a 2x4 through her life. 

Reid was ridiculously beautiful. That was the word: beautiful. It was hard to come up with a different descriptor when faced with those high cheekbones, that square jaw, his strange, long, thin grace… And yet, he didn’t see it, and probably never would if that night’s behavior was any indication. But beyond that he had a full and beautiful heart as well. It could manage to be open and forgive and be generous when all of its previous experience dictated that it should do the exact opposite. Emily was suddenly very scared of destroying that heart.

She was through lying to herself about this: she was in deep with Reid. There was a long, complicated, emotional connection between the two of them. It had been going on for years even when they had been unaware of it. Now it had exploded in a gloriously messy way, and shown them that they could never go back to the way it was before. 

But Emily was really bad at relationships. Even if the relationship was casual and baggage-free like a few that she’d had in the recent past, they’d always crashed and burned leaving her feeling slightly resentful that she’d made the effort in the first place. Those were the easy ones - the ones that she didn’t mind seeing the back of. They were easy to disregard once they were over, being more like extended one-night stands than anything else.

This wouldn’t be easy. She and Reid were colleagues and they were friends. They knew too much about each other’s secrets. There were trust issues. There were resentments. And there was the ‘L’ word that Reid had just dropped like he was talking about his favorite sweater or something. Emily closed her eyes and tried not to panic. She couldn’t see how she was going to avoid screwing this up somehow. 

_Its not the issues that scare you, it’s the fact that you haven’t felt this way about anyone since - what? - college, maybe? Have you ever felt like this?_

She closed her eyes tighter and tried to push the thoughts aside. 

_You’ve been riding out your life in one focused direction for a long time. What if he changes all of that? Maybe he’ll finally convince you to let someone shoulder the load with you - wouldn’t that be something?_

Then there was Doyle. He’d been hanging between them for nine months but they’d never talked about it. Hotch’s message left little doubt in Emily’s mind that she’d be forced to face him at least once again before this was over, and it would probably happen in front of Reid. She wondered what Reid thought about her actions in the Doyle case, but she was too mortified to imagine the possibilities. They’d have to talk about it some time and she was dreading it. She thought about those mornings waking up in a very different bed to very different arms around her, trying to smile in a way that suggested infatuation and adoration. She thought about his kisses, how he felt inside her, how she wanted to scream afterward as he held her close and whispered about all the plans that he was making for _them_ …

Suddenly, she couldn’t stand laying next to Reid thinking about Doyle. It was like inviting something dark and sticky between them, and wherever it touched, it left a residue behind that might not come off. She quietly slipped out of Reid’s arms and searched for her clothes.

_Are you really just going to sneak out on him while he sleeps? What are you - 16?_

Emily pulled her shirt over her head and stared at the sleeping silhouette in the bed. Her heart kicked out a big, sad thump as shame overcame her. She _wanted_ Reid to be the person that changed things for her. But in order to let that happen, he’d have to see her for who she really was - unpleasant realities and all. She was fairly certain that she couldn’t bear falling that far in his estimation. 

She found her shoes and grabbed her jacket trying to make as little noise as possible.

_Don’t be a jerk! At least leave him a note…_

She tiptoed out into the central part of Reid’s studio searching for something on which to write. She followed a light into his kitchen and saw his .38 in pieces on a table. A mirror image of her comm. unit sat on the table as well, her last message still blinking on the screen:

_**[ Im outside ur front door - let me in! ]** _

She slid down into his chair and stared out the large windows that faced a darkened D.C. skyline. How many nights had he sat in that chair, staring out those windows, cleaning his gun and waiting for her to contact him? How long before that had he sat there and wondered if he’d ever work up the courage to tell her how he felt? 

Emily felt a tear skim down her cheek but ignored it. Instead, she reached for Reid’s gun oil and finished cleaning and assembling his .38 for him. It wasn’t much of a favor, all things considered, but it was grounding and familiar. It restored her calm. When she was done, she wiped the table down and arranged the gun and it’s cleaning materials in a neat row. Then, she found a small pad stuck to the fridge, wrote a brief note, and tucked it under the gun. 

_Spencer,  
I’m sorry that I had to leave so early. I still have to retrieve my bags and check into my hotel before the briefing this morning… I really wish that I could have stayed._

_I don’t have words for last night. Now, more than ever, I want to put the past behind me and get on to the possibilities of the future. You were right all along: I needed the team to catch Doyle, and it seems as though that’s how it’s going to play out after all. I’m no good on my own - I’m always better when I’m a part of something. I hope that everyone - even you - can forgive me for the mistakes that I’ve made in the past year._

_I’ll see you at the briefing,  
Emily_

She turned away without rereading it, found her way back to the front hallway, and then let herself out making sure to close the door as quietly as possible behind her.


	8. The Day After The Night Before

Hotch sat behind his desk and scowled. Morgan had just finished outlining the information that he, Reid, and Garcia had collected in their search for Declan Doyle. It wasn’t even 8a.m. yet but Hotch’s coffee had already gone cold in his mug. Reid sensed that today was going to be long, hellish, and uncomfortable for everyone.

“How long has this been going on?” Hotch leaned forward.

“A few months.” Morgan didn’t blink.

“What were you planning on doing with this?”

“We thought that observing the boy could gain us insight into Doyle’s whereabouts, which we would’ve brought to the Bureau when we had something concrete.”

“You realize how this implicates the current child murders investigation?”

Morgan closed his eyes briefly and Reid rubbed his temple. Garcia looked around in confusion. “Wait. What implication?”

“The targets of the UNSUB are the same targets that we’ve been focusing on in our search.” Morgan explained. “We even have motive to commit these crimes.”

“Motive to kill children?! What are you talking about?”

“An argument could be made that being so distressed by the death of our colleague, we decided to exact revenge on Doyle by drawing him back to D.C. for assassination. The murders are a means to lure him back.” Reid gave Garcia a gentle look. She didn’t deserve this sort of suspicion.

“We didn’t kill children! Hotch…” Garcia turned to her boss. “We didn’t - you know us. Besides, we have alibis…”

“With each other.” Reid reminded her. “Co-conspirators.”

Hotch waved his hands to calm the conversation. “I know that you didn’t commit these murders. But what I know and what can be proved are very different things.”

He sighed and looked at his watch.

“It’s almost 8. We will present your findings alongside the established facts of this case. None of you will work any angle of this investigation alone, or with each other to the exclusion of anyone else. Finding Doyle, his son, and this UNSUB is now imperative beyond our personal reasons. The reputation of the unit and the integrity of every case that we ever worked on is now on the line.”

Hotch rose from his seat and buttoned his jacket while frowning. If this went wrong, everyone would pay, thought Reid. Hotch was taking a huge risk just by letting them out of his office without wearing handcuffs. 

“This incident will remain within the team for now. If we don’t succeed, you will all most likely be charged. The rest of us will merely be fired and perhaps sued by the federal government and the families of any UNSUB that we ever put away.” Hotch leaned forward and fixed each agent with an icy stare in turn. “And if we succeed, there will still be consequences for you three. Count on it.”

He swept a large case file from his desk and strode towards the office door.

“Now get to the conference room. We have work to do.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prentiss fidgeted in the elevator as she rode up to the Behavioral Sciences floor. Her body was jumpy from the time difference, the 3 coffees that she had slammed back to prepare for the morning briefing, and from the buzz that it still held from her evening with Reid. She was so hopped up that it was difficult to clearly identify her emotional state from one moment to the next. There was excitement, apprehension, fear, shame - and then there was the powerful mix that was reserved for her feelings about Reid alone. She was almost terrified at the prospect of seeing him again. She had wondered what it would be like, and last night she had gotten her wish. Now, she had to deal with the uncomfortable conflict of _wanting more_ but being unable to give up her emotional armor. And, in typical Dysfunctional Emily fashion, she had contrived a scenario that would push him away with great effectiveness.

_Why are you doing this to him? To yourself?_

“He wouldn’t want me if he knew what I was really like.” She whispered to herself.

_He’s been with you through all of this despite his reservations. Maybe he could stare down your Evil Twin as well._

She smirked at her inner voice’s sudden optimistic streak.

_And, damn, he’s hot in bed…_

Prentiss’s face flushed as the elevator doors opened onto the familiar bullpen just as her mind offered up the look on Reid’s face as he watched her guide his hands for her own pleasure. She’d never seen such pure enjoyment on a man’s face unless he was getting himself off. The image haunted her, reminding her that he gave while all she did was take. She heard his voice as he murmured her name above their ragged breathing and the whispers of the sheets, and heat flashed through her whole body in an instant. She shook her head and smoothed her suit jacket, trying to focus on the task in front of her.

“Nervous?”

She turned and saw Hotch staring at her from the small kitchen off the bullpen. The room was empty otherwise. His stare was as it had always been, and though it wasn’t exactly friendly, she was relieved to see it, and smiled.

“Yeah, I guess. Where is everyone?”

Hotch walked over and squeezed her arm, once and tightly. “Don’t worry - you’ll get past this. Everyone’s in the conference room, c’mon.”

They walked towards the room together, the sounds of nervous chatter growing louder as they approached the open doorway. Hotch leaned over slightly and whispered.

“It’s good to have you back.”

And with that, he entered the room forcing her to follow him without comment. There were audible gasps as she stood before the conference table. Morgan looked stunned and murmured her name. Seaver looked to Rossi who was just staring open-mouthed at Prentiss. J.J. gave her a quick supportive wink as Garcia shouted and then popped up to suffocate her in a hug before anyone could stop her. Prentiss stumbled back and held Garcia in place as the tech started babbling incoherently against her. Hotch said something about catching up later as J.J. tried to pry Garcia off. She finally found Reid’s face; he was sporting a schooled look of surprise, but under it was anger and sadness that were new. Her heart constricted as she thought, _I did that_. She looked away and caught Hotch staring at Reid: he wasn’t buying his expression at all.

_Dammit, just what we need… another secret to explain._

_What’s to explain if you never let it happen again? It’s not a problem if there’s nothing between you, right?_

_But there IS something between us._

_Given that look on his face and the stupid note that you left him, I wouldn’t count on that._

_What happened to the optimism?_

_It’s about as flexible as your sense of honesty._

“We need to get going on this, people.” Hotch interrupted and directed Garcia to present the initial case evidence.

The specifics of the 3 murders were mapped out as well as the report from CSIS about Doyle’s identification from the Windsor border crossing. The connection was speculative but plausible. Then, Garcia handed the floor over to Morgan who presented the evidence that he, Garcia, and _Reid_ had gathered on their own time. Prentiss masked her shock with a bland expression of surprise and confirmation. When had he started that? Why hadn’t he told her?

_You made it obvious in France that you didn’t want or need his help, remember? You didn’t think that he’d just let that go, did you?_

They had gotten surprisingly close to Declan. She confirmed which child on their list was him and that he was in the care of a trained caregiver and bodyguard. She placed him in a safe house in Alexandria, and the decision was made to send a team out there with Prentiss to bring the child and guardian in. Their next target would be watching the home for signs of Doyle and processing the previous crime scenes to create a profile on the killer. With the team split up into 3 groups, people quickly started shuffling off to their various assignments. Reid made a beeline for the door without looking at her. Before she could decide what to do, arms wrapped around her again.

“I can’t believe you’re here!” Garcia was on the verge of getting weepy again.

“I missed you, Penelope.”

“This has been an unbelievable morning… and it’s like we’ve got the old team back - J.J.’s here, Reid’s back, and now you…”

“What do you mean ‘Reid’s back’?”

“Poor baby hasn’t been an active field agent in almost 6 months. He was never right after you… died. He took a leave of absence and hasn’t been back since. He’s lecturing at the Academy but I don’t think that’s a permanent thing. I know that Hotch has been holding onto his desk for him, but there’s pressure from Strauss to replace him with a different agent.”

Prentiss arched an eyebrow at Garcia and she smirked in that sneaky, busybody way of hers. “I hear that Strauss’s paperwork necessary to force a new agent into the unit keeps getting sent to dead email addresses… anyway, this is the Braintrust’s first case back and I hope that we can convince him to make it permanent. With both of you gone, it was hard to get my geek on around here.”

Garcia wiped away a few tears and smiled, giving Prentiss another awesome hug before walking them both out into the bullpen. Prentiss was floored; Reid had been lying about his private investigation _and_ his status at the FBI. Granted they were lies of omission, but she still wanted to know why. Had he lost his nerve for field work? Did he not see the point in it any longer? That didn’t seem likely. Could he not face continuing without her? Flattering - and self-centered - but no, that couldn’t be it either. Then, a disturbing thought came to her that sent her stomach flipping and her brain into a spin: _was he too sick?_

She looked around the bullpen for him, but met Rossi and Morgan bearing down on her instead.

“C’mon Prentiss, let’s go kick in some doors in Alexandria.” Morgan winked but kept his face closed off. There would be time to figure out how to mend fences later.

Prentiss nodded and walked to the elevators with the two men. It felt good - like old times. Except it wasn’t old times: she wasn’t an FBI agent anymore, her colleagues were confused and suspicious, they were hunting down a man who wanted her dead, and the one man that she trusted more than the rest was keeping his own counsel. She wanted to feel anger. She wanted to feel resentment. But none of it would have been powerful enough to drown out the hysterical laughing that her inner voice was directing at her.

_Your hypocrisy is so huge that it has it’s own atmosphere…_

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reid arranged the crime scene photos of the 3 child murders on the whiteboard by his desk. Hotch appeared next to him without warning and stared at the photos.

“Reid, my office. Now.”

Hotch turned without another word and Reid followed him to his office like a penitent schoolboy. He waited for Hotch to sit and then did likewise staring at the senior agent. Hotch waited a full minute before speaking, and when he did, he shifted uncharacteristically behind his desk.

“How long have you known about Prentiss?”

There was absolutely no point in bluffing. “Six months, but I had my doubts from the beginning.”

Hotch arched an eyebrow and steepled his fingers, a signal that he expected more of an explanation.

“It’s why I went to Europe. I found her in France and asked her to come back to the U.S. with me. She refused saying that she had to find Doyle first. I agreed to perpetuating the lie of her death in return for regular communication from her.” Reid straightened his back and stared directly at Hotch. “She also told me that you and J.J. knew about her ruse.” 

“That information was on a ‘need to know’ protocol.” Hotch growled.

“Well, since you already knew, I didn’t feel the _need_ to inform you that I did as well.” Reid lifted his chin slightly. “And since Prentiss didn’t tell you, I guess she thought that you didn’t need to know either.”

Hotch leaned forward in his seat and gave Reid the look that he used on suspects before he was about to strip their lives away and reveal their messy innards to them. He almost spoke and then stopped, just staring instead. After a time, he sat back and averted his gaze towards his office window.

“Is this why you won’t come back to the unit?”

“No.” Reid blurted without thinking. He couldn’t tell Hotch about the headaches - he’d be taken off the Doyle case immediately, and now there was much more riding on it’s outcome. “I-I just feel… maybe I’m burnt out. Maybe 7 years was all I had in me.”

Hotch turned back towards him, his expression softening a fraction. “I don’t believe that, but I’ll accept it as an official reason if you wish. I assume that you’ll want to see this case through?”

Reid nodded.

“Okay, then get back to work.”

Reid got up and headed for the door.

“Reid?”

“Yes?”

“For what it’s worth now: I’m sorry about how this turned out. It was a bad idea from the start.”

Reid nodded knowing that Hotch was referring to Prentiss’s ‘death’. He felt that the statement was applicable to just about everything that had happened over the past nine months. 

“You’re right - it was.”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The news was bad from Alexandria. Declan was gone and his caretaker was dead. Hotch ordered a team to sit on the house in case Doyle appeared, but no one held out hope of that. Rossi, Morgan, and Prentiss spent hours at the new crime scene trying glean anything about their UNSUB. They returned to the bullpen with almost a full day behind them and a pile of crime scene photos, but little else. Garcia hurried to Morgan as he stepped off the elevator and his expression changed from disappointment to worry in a heartbeat. Garcia appeared to be on the edge of tears. It didn’t make any sense: why was there so much emotion attached to this case? They had all worked child murders before…

Reid had relocated to the conference room to better map out the invisible web that only he could assemble from disparate facts and minutiae. Prentiss took a deep breath and climbed the stairs to join him. He stood before a massive combined dry erase board, his hands alive with different coloured markers that twitched as he thought. He darted towards a long and intricate family tree that represented the Valhalla crime syndicate and underlined a name. He stood back quickly and turned to view both the family tree and the latest victim photos. 

She stood quietly and watched him work. He wore thick-rimmed glasses that she hadn’t seen for ages; she wondered when he had given up on contacts. He leaned against the conference table and his body made a graceful arc from the line of his shoulders down through his back and twisting slightly out through his pelvis towards the ground. He had abandoned his jacket, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and relaxed his tie but everything else about him was pure, button-down Reid. She watched as his marker-stained fingers tapped at his lips while he thought, and then she thought of those fingers tracing her lips, her collarbone, the crest of her hip…

He turned suddenly and saw her in the doorway, crime scene photos in her hands. The brilliant distraction was immediately gone, replaced by an efficient professionalism that he had honed over the years.

“Are those the Alexandria photos?”

She nodded and held them out to him. He took them without looking at her; his hands whipping them out of the envelope and up onto the board in a flash. It felt like a slap in the face, although she was possessed enough to realize that it was no more than she deserved. 

_You listened to him say the words. You told him that you needed him - you said that you were all in with him. Then you ruthlessly slept with him and left him to wake up alone and in doubt. He basically saved you and you fucked him… both literally and figuratively._

She walked around the table and stood within arms reach of him. She stood back as he did and looked at the board in its entirety. She stilled her thoughts and let the profiler in her tick over the evidence, trying to find the connections that he’d already made.

“The murders are perfunctory - efficient.” She began.

“No disorder in the homes, no other signs of violence, and no attempts to hide or cover the bodies afterward.” He continued as if they were sharing the same brain.

“No stippling around the gunshot wounds, so, shot from at least 4 feet away…”

“But only 1 shot per victim - the kill shot.”

“Professional?”

He nodded.

“Then… I don’t understand the motive. These murders are a means to an end, but the end is revenge and that’s emotional… messy…”

“You’re making an assumption.” He corrected as he raised a finger. “Just because the target is Declan, doesn’t mean that the goal is revenge upon Doyle. Declan is just the easiest way to get Doyle’s attention. The clearest way to motivate a recalcitrant individual is to manipulate them through their loved ones. You know about that…”

She looked at him then even though he was still lost in the contents of the board. Her heart stuttered unevenly in her chest.

“These kills are too controlled, too clean to be driven by someone bent on revenge.” He continued without looking at her. “This means either that this is about business, or, someone with revenge in mind hired a professional to act for them.”

He turned to her suddenly, his face serious and focused. “You know who’s left of Valhalla’s organization out there… did he screw any of them over? Are there any left who would have a grudge strong enough for this sort of planning?”

She was caught off guard by his question. In fact, she was caught off guard by his whole demeanor; she had expected emotion and conflict, not professional detachment. 

“Ummm, most of the organization is incarcerated. His main trading contacts are the only people that would carry any significant resentment towards him and most of those are under investigation - it’s too risky to do this, and in the U.S. to boot. Almost everyone that he ever dealt with wants him dead, the difference is that most of them think he is, or that he is still in prison.”

Reid bit his lip and pulled off his glasses. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temple. She could see his mind checking off boxes and trying to formulate new theories. She wanted to reach out and touch him. She wanted to tell him to stop for a moment and rest.

“Okay, what about people that Doyle would go to for help?” He sighed. “He’s out of prison and being hunted my several law enforcement agencies… he hears that his son is alive and at risk… who would he trust with that information? Who would help him out with… transportation, false documents, a safe house, resources if he rescued his son?”

Prentiss crossed in front of him and stood before the family tree. She looked at the names but didn’t have to look at the photos; many of these people were more familiar to her than her own family. Many of them were already dead because of her. A name stood out low down in the tree.

“This one. She’s Doyle’s second aunt or something. She’s basically the only blood family that he has left. She was never a part of his business affairs so she was never charged with anything.” Prentiss looked up at Reid. “She was very protective of Declan - she didn’t like me being around him. When Doyle asked me to marry him and become Declan’s mother, she had a heated argument with him over it and he banned her from the house.”

Reid’s face went stony. “Doyle asked you to marry him?”

Prentiss closed her eyes briefly and then nodded. When she opened them again, Reid’s professional face was back on as if nothing had happened.

“Would she help him in spite of their falling out?”

“Yes, if only for Declan’s sake. I think that she thought of herself as the boy’s de facto mother.”

“Who _is_ Declan’s mother?”

“I don’t know. Doyle never spoke of her. I assumed that she was dead.”

“Okay.” Reid sighed and put his glasses back on. “The aunt is who we focus on. We have to switch gears and find Doyle - he’s our best chance of catching this killer now.”

He turned to leave, presumably to tell the others of his conclusions. She reached out and grabbed his arm to stop him.

“Spencer, about last night…”

“This really isn’t the time for that.”

“Yeah, I know… but there are things that need to be said.”

“I don’t want to hear it.” He shrugged her arm off gently but firmly. “There is so much more at risk here than just your life, Emily. Morgan, Garcia, and I could all be implicated if this ends badly. It would basically destroy this team for good, so forgive me if I’m less concerned about making _you_ feel better about dumping me.”

“Dumping you?”

“ _‘I want to put the past behind me and get on to the possibilities of the future’_?” He made air quotes with his fingers. “ _‘Forgive me for the mistakes I’ve made in the past year’_?”

Damn him and his stupid eidetic memory.

“Perhaps ‘dumping’ is too strong a word. It implies a relationship of some meaning has occurred. Granted, I said that I loved you, but that’s really not much in the scheme of things to a woman who considered marrying the object of an investigation, is it?” His face took on a bitterness that she hadn’t seen before.

_Remember that you did this, honey…_

“Did you agree to marry him? You weren’t clear on that point.”

“Fuck you, Reid.” She growled.

He leaned in close so that his nose was almost touching hers. “Too late, you already did that.”

She took a few steps back as if he’d hit her. Her eyes stung but she refused to let him she her like that. 

_He’s giving you the out that you wanted. If you push him a little bit further now, it’ll be over. Easy peasy. Save both of you the extended heartache later on, right?_

_Right?_

“Yeah, I agreed to marry him.” She lied so easily. “Why not? I had him right where I wanted him with his balls in my hands and his head on the block. And, really, after you’ve let someone have you in every conceivable way, can you honestly draw the line at a proposal? If you can’t tell that someone is lying to you when she’s fucking you face to face, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever get wise.”

Reid’s mouth dropped open and he reached out for a chair back to support him. He looked very unsteady. Prentiss felt sick to her stomach and she bit down on her tongue to prevent herself from giving her game away. Her hand tightened into a hard fist as she went in for the kill.

“It wasn’t all bad, you know. He was amazing in bed - a few times I almost let my cover slip because he made me forget my own name. _That_ takes some skill.” She watched as Reid tried to avoid wincing. “Besides, we both knew that we weren’t completely trustworthy. There were lies on both sides. I knew everything about him, so it never concerned me.” 

She stepped closer to Reid. “Were you ever going to tell me about the investigation that you were doing with Morgan and Garcia? Or the fact that you’ve all but quit the Bureau? Unlike Doyle, I don’t think that I know _you_ at all.”

“Well,” His voice caught in his throat and it made her stomach lurch violently. “I-I guess that makes two of us then.”

He spun quickly and left her alone in the conference room. She turned away from the room’s windows that faced out into the bullpen and leaned against the table. Alone, and with her face hidden from view, she sucked in a few shaky, erratic breaths and let her tears fall silently.

_It’s for the best._

“Shut up!” She whispered. “Haven’t you done enough for one day?”


	9. Just An Idea

Reid lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling. Hotch had ordered the team to rest while they waited on the multiple database search for Doyle’s aunt. It had been almost 6 years since Interpol had lost track of her; she could be almost anywhere. 

It was pointless to attempt sleep, but he made a token effort to relax his body, thinking that once they all got the call, they might not have another chance for quite a while. He was out of practice with the full-court-press mentality of an intense case, and he felt fatigue nipping at his heels. He couldn’t let that happen. His body needed rest to stave off the headaches. So, his body was resting but his mind was in overdrive. Somewhere in the swampy tangle of secrets and agonizingly inconclusive evidence lay the narrow path that would lead them through the chaos and out the other side again. He _just_ couldn’t see it.

He was emotionally compromised; he wasn’t in denial about that. But, perhaps for the first time in the team’s history, they _all_ were emotionally compromised to some degree. He feared for Morgan and Garcia and, yes, even Emily. Despite her behavior in the past 30 hours, he grudgingly admitted to himself that he was still doing this mostly for her.

Her revelations about Doyle came back to him - accurate and in her voice thanks to his freakish memory - to slap him in the face over and over. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to focus on an aspect of the case, but it only made the visions clearer. He saw her with _him_ , her body wrapped around his clinging desperately as she wrung every second of pleasure from the man. Reid imagined the things that she told Doyle, both during and afterwards - things that convinced him that she loved him, things that she never told Reid. He remembered how disdainful she was as she described how she fooled Doyle: _‘his balls in my hands and his head on the block’_. Reid cringed as he imagined how she thought of his lovesick misadventure to Europe or his academic efforts in bed…

“She conned a suspicious, paranoid, international arms dealer into loving her. What chance did I stand?” He whispered miserably.

_Then why do you still give a damn about what happens to her?_

“It was real for me. It _is_ real.”

_She made herself pretty clear today. She’s not concerned about hurting you._

“It just doesn’t make any sense… it doesn’t fit with the 6 years of experiences that I’ve had with her.”

_She played you. Accept it._

“To what end? She couldn’t have known that she’d need to manipulate me so long ago. She couldn’t have predicted my actions after she faked her death. This just isn’t logical…”

_Maybe she just enjoys making men dance to her tune. She likes pulling the strings. Your big mistake is in thinking that there is a logical explanation to it._

“There has to be a reason…”

_No, there doesn’t. It’s emotions, not an unbalanced equation. You two didn’t make sense from the start, and you KNEW that._

Reid lay still and let his heart hammer against his chest as he tried to convince himself to let go. He had to focus on the bigger picture: there were very real consequences to failure now. He couldn’t allow Morgan and Garcia to be charged with murder. He couldn’t destroy the team and ruin Hotch’s career.

_You’re too pretty for prison._

That too, he nodded to himself. He had to channel his heartbreak and anger into finding Doyle and the UNSUB. He couldn’t let anything outstrip that, especially useless feelings for a callous woman who brought all of this on them in the first place.

On his bedside table, his phone vibrated. He rolled to get it.

“Reid.”

“It’s Morgan. We’ve got Doyle.”

“What?” Reid sat upright.

“We found the aunt - she’s in Massachusetts. But before we had a chance to contact her, Doyle showed up at the Alexandria house. He took out an agent there, but we’ve got him.”

“Wow. I guess his intelligence network isn’t what it used to be.”

“Guess not. Hotch wants you here for the interrogation.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in 20 minutes.”

Morgan hung up and Reid scrambled to collect his things around his room. In the dim light from his window he saw two dark patches on his pillow on either side of where his head had been resting. His mouth thinned in determination and he scrubbed away the lingering traces of his tears with his shirtsleeve. There was no time for self-pity, not when he was so close to setting foot on the path out of all of this.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

“Hotch!” Reid called out as he hurried down the corridor towards the interrogation suites.

“You got here quickly.” Hotch nodded.

“I couldn’t sleep. What’s the plan?”

“Rossi and Seaver took the jet to Massachusetts 2 hours ago to interview Doyle’s aunt. We need to get a handle on who has the motive and means to threaten Doyle with his son.”

“It shouldn’t be a long list. Prentiss’s case notes indicate that very few people even knew that he had a son to begin with.”

“Exactly, but we shouldn’t expect that he’ll be forthcoming about this. He killed an agent, so he’s ours for the foreseeable future. Facing a murder trial here and possible extradition back to Europe afterwards, we can’t use his son as an enticement to co-operate. He might even think that Declan is better off dead at his captors hands than parted from his father for a lifetime.”

“That thought occurred to me as well.”

“I’ve asked Prentiss to observe the interrogation in case she has any insights into how to maneuver him.”

“You’re not seriously thinking of letting her into the same room with him, are you?” Reid’s voice was tight.

“You think I can’t handle it, Reid?”

Reid turned and saw Prentiss in the doorway leading to the observation room off the interrogation suite.

“I think that you’re capable of just about anything.” He answered flatly. “But that man stabbed you through the abdomen with a 2x4. I don’t think that his demeanor would be softened by your sudden resurrection. And, quite frankly, I don’t want him breathing the same air as you.”

A strange moment of silence followed his speech in which no one seemed to know what to do or say next. Hotch cleared his throat which snapped Prentiss out of the odd stare that she was giving Reid.

“I have no intention of letting Doyle know that Prentiss is alive, let alone in the next room.” Hotch gestured for Prentiss to go inside the observation room, and after she did, he and Reid approached the interrogation suite. His hand landed on the door handle but he turned to face Reid instead.

“Is there something that you want to tell me?”

“About what?”

“You’re pretty hostile towards Prentiss considering you knew that she was alive for the past 6 months.”

“Just because I knew doesn’t make things all right between us.” Reid lied. “This case is extremely stressful for everyone. I just want to get through it.”

“I know you do.” Hotch’s voice became softer and lower. “Just be careful not to push so hard to get to what you believe is the inevitable conclusion. Complex cases like this one unfold in surprising ways, in my experience. There tends to be more than one favorable outcome, but if you ignore the subtler aspects of the evidence, you could miss it.”

Reid was unsure if Hotch was hinting at something beyond the case or not. He wasn’t given any time to consider it further as Hotch opened the door and they went to work on Ian Doyle.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hotch and Reid walked into the dim observation room and shut the door.

“We aren’t getting anywhere.” Hotch sighed. “He won’t give up anything that might endanger his son.”

Reid leaned against the one-way glass in the room and rubbed his temples. A mild ache was beginning to form but he tried not to think about it.

“Rossi called.” Prentiss offered. “Doyle’s aunt told him that Declan’s mother is a small time arms and drug runner called Chloe Donaghy. They dated for a brief time but the aunt never saw much of her. One day, Doyle showed up with an infant and said that Chloe didn’t want any part of the child’s life. The aunt cared for Declan and never asked anything more about it.”

“Is she still alive?” Hotch asked.

“As of 2006 she was, then all record of her stops. No Inland Revenue statements, no passport or travel visas issued in her name, no property listed, no record of incarceration…”

“Are we thinking that this is a custodial kidnap case?” Reid stood up straight.

“5 years is a long time to wait to retrieve your child.” Hotch murmured.

“I don’t think that Chloe has the resources to pull this off.” Prentiss shook her head. “She never appeared on our radar while we were investigating Doyle, not even as a marginal subcontractor, and we were extremely thorough.”

“But the mothering instinct is a very strong motive.” Reid added almost unconsciously.

“She’d need help. And she comes from a world that has plenty of professionals willing to take the risk if the money was right.” Hotch concurred.

Prentiss sighed and looked at Doyle through the one-way glass. “It comes back to Doyle: he’d know who Chloe would seek out. Maybe he’s already figured out the ‘who’ and the ‘where’ while we’ve been spinning our wheels here.”

She ran her fingers nervously through her hair and turned to face Hotch. “Let me talk to him. If there’s any chance that he’ll open up, it’s to me.”

“How do you figure that?” Reid blurted.

“He loathes me - it’s true.” She looked at Reid with a plea for understanding. “I betrayed him, not only as a cop but as a lover as well. I destroyed everything that he created. But, I also saved his son. I protected Declan - I gave him a new life. I did it myself, with my own resources, and never told Interpol. Doyle _asked_ me to become Declan’s mother and, in a way, I did. If I can make him see that - make him understand that his son means something to me as well - maybe he’ll see me as the lesser of two evils.”

Reid stood silently. He had no response for her. It seemed like an extremely unlikely outcome, but considering what Hotch said earlier, maybe it was just a subtler one.

“I’m uncomfortable with this.” Hotch said.

_Thank goodness somebody else is._

“We’re running low on options.” Prentiss concluded. “I can do this, Hotch. Please let me try.”

Hotch stared at her for a long time, his arms crossed in an expression of uncompromising defiance. He nodded once, stood straighter and headed for the door.

“Okay, but Reid goes in there with you. If he senses that it’s going nowhere, he pulls the plug and that’s it. No arguments. Got it?” He looked at them both and waited for them to acknowledge his conditions.

Reid ground his teeth and shoved his hands in his pockets. Prentiss followed Hotch to the door but held up as she passed Reid.

“I can do this, you know.” She murmured to him. “I know what’s at risk… for you, the team, for everyone. I know that you won’t believe me, but we want the same thing. And I’m not leaving that room until we get it. I promise you that.”

Reid looked at her and saw the determination that he had witnessed a thousand times before when she braced a suspect or busted down a door or labored overtime to make a profile work. For a second he saw the old Emily, the one that he had absolute faith in, and it lifted his spirits because _that_ woman always had his back. He had come to trust that like gravity and it allowed him to move through the world with greater ease. He found himself giving her the tiniest of smiles - it was almost against his will. He just couldn’t fight off 6 years worth of memories at that moment. He nodded and followed her out of the observation room without argument. He gave her his trust one last time.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reid walked in first and leaned against the far wall of the interrogation room. Doyle followed him with his eyes until a familiar voice broke his concentration.

“Hello Ian.”

Doyle’s eyes widened but it was the only physical concession that he made to Prentiss’s presence. After a moment he cocked his head to the side and gave her a smarmy smile.

“Just like a bad penny, aren’t ya?”

“I prefer to think of myself as a survivor. Like you.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

“Sure you are.” Prentiss smiled and tilted her head as she took a seat across from him. “We just have different goals, that’s all. You can appreciate that distinction, can’t you?”

“Perhaps.” 

Doyle smiled and licked his lips slowly. Reid forced himself to remain still and neutral against the wall.

“C’mon Ian, you never struck me as a man who had time for denial. We both engaged in a dangerous game. I could afford to aim and miss, but you couldn’t. The only reason why you ended up here is because they sent in a player of equal ability and guile.” Prentiss leaned in closer. “Do you honestly believe that I would’ve made it as far into your inner circle if you _hadn’t_ seen something of yourself in me?”

Reid’s stomach twisted at her words. He’d never given their personal dynamic that much thought before, but her assessment struck a chord of truth with him. Doyle and Prentiss were two aspects of the same pathology, and that’s why the operation had worked. He wouldn’t have considered it of the Emily that he thought he knew, but this one - the one who had beguiled and tricked Ian Doyle into loving her, into giving up all of his secrets - well, how else could he explain it to himself?

Doyle’s eyes flicked to Reid and hung there for a long moment. Reid stared back at him and hoped that his face had remained neutral.

“Well, you had something… I’ll give you that, at least. What do you want, Lauren?”

“We want Declan, and we want the people who took him.”

Doyle shrugged. “You’re asking the wrong person. I went to the wrong house, remember?”

“Ian, we don’t have time to dance and flirt. Let’s just get down to negotiating the goodnight kiss, shall we?”

Doyle leaned forward and smiled again. “You always did like to get right _to it_ , didn’t you, luv?” He spared a brief, piercing stare in Reid’s direction, which produced another satisfied smile.

“We know about Chloe. We know that you either kept Declan from her, or she volunteered to back out of his life. But something’s changed now - she’s come after him, hasn’t she?”

“Chloe was never a mother. She’s a psychopath. Declan means less than nothing to her.”

A look flickered across his face that brought Reid out of his sulking and across the room to stand behind Prentiss.

“You’re scared for him.” Reid murmured. “You’re scared that Chloe has him. Why?”

“She has no feeling for the boy. She never wanted him.” Doyle spat at Reid.

“Then why would she go to the trouble of taking him? Just to get back at you?”

“Declan’s my son - I love him.”

“But you never loved her, did you?” Prentiss added.

“She’s incapable of love - maybe all women are.” Doyle flicked his frozen stare back to Prentiss. “When she found out she was pregnant, she tried to get an abortion. I stopped her.”

“You _paid_ her to have your son?”

“No.” Doyle sat back in his chair. “I kept her from harming herself or the baby until she gave birth.”

Prentiss gasped suddenly and leaned away from the table, a look of disgust shadowing her features. “You imprisoned her to force her to have your baby.”

“What did you do after the baby was born?” Reid asked casually. “Did you just kick her out?”

“I did what you do with any whore: I paid her for her time and told her never to come back.” Doyle chuckled at Reid. “I should’ve done the same thing to your lady friend here…”

Reid said nothing but Prentiss shook her head over and over. “You were right, Ian, we aren’t so much alike after all. And now I _really_ don’t feel bad about screwing you over.”

“Well, you’re the expert in screwing, aren’t ya, Lauren?” Doyle looked over at Reid and then back to Prentiss. “I’ve gotta say that I’m impressed that your recovery hasn’t effected your appetite for conquest.”

Reid shifted in his chair. He was finding it difficult to mask everything that he was feeling. It was clear that Doyle had picked up on something, but Reid was just bruised enough to let the man’s inaccurate jabs get under his skin.

“Has she told you that she loves you, boy-o?” Doyle leaned in to address Reid. “Let me tell ya, the night that she told me that, I came like a rocket booster, ya know? There’s something about a gorgeous woman’s mouth wrapped around your cock - and knowing that she’s doing it for love - makes you turn into the Trevi Fountain…”

“Ian…” Prentiss growled.

“By night’s end she had more cum on her than a teenaged boy’s shorts.”

“Ian!”

“You shoulda seen what she let me do to her when I proposed…”

Reid sat motionless across from Doyle, every inch of him itching for flight, or violence, or just to head out of the room and walk away from everything forever.

“Of course, if I had known that she was lying to me the whole time,” Doyle continued, delighted with himself. “I would’ve just given it to her up the arse and tossed her from a moving car when we were done.”

“All right, asshole,” Prentiss stood up, throwing back her chair, and yanked Doyle by his shirt collar down into the table top with a loud crack. “When I said that we didn’t have time for this, I meant it. Your son is out there with the woman that you brutalized and threw away like trash when you were done with her. Every time she looks at Declan, that’s probably all she sees. How long do you think that she’ll hold onto him once she knows that you are in custody and out of her reach?”

Doyle blinked through the bloody mess that Prentiss had made of his nose as the truth of her question settled into him.

“You said it yourself,” Reid added quietly. “She doesn’t feel anything for the boy.”

“ _I_ gave him a life, Ian.” Prentiss yanked on Doyle’s shirt to emphasize her point. “ _I_ kept him safe all these years. You asked me to take care of your son and that’s _exactly_ what I did, whether it’s how you intended it or not.”

Doyle blinked as all expression drained from his face. Prentiss let go of his shirt and came around the table, crouching down to face him. Reid stood up, ready to grab Doyle if he made a move in her direction.

“He’s good in school - really good. He likes science.” Prentiss’s voice grew softer. “He plays soccer too - you’d be proud of him for that. He has many friends and he’s _happy_ , Ian - he’s a really happy little guy who doesn’t know anything about violence or suspicion or betrayal…”

Prentiss reached out to grab Doyle’s cuffed hands and he flinched until he realized that she was just going to hold them. Reid growled inwardly - he didn’t want her touching Doyle ever again.

“You made your choices, Ian, and you’ve had quite a life. But that’s all come to an end now. There’s no getting out of this, no pie-in-the-sky fantasy of reclaiming your son and riding off to a better life together. You _know_ that.”

Doyle looked down and away, the first show of shame he had expressed.

“Declan hasn’t had a chance to make any choices for himself yet. I tried to give him that opportunity, but now Chloe has taken that away from him. You can hate me all you want, Ian - hate what I stand for, hate the system for denying you your freedom - but there comes a time when you can no longer hide from the things you’ve done. Are you going to make Declan pay that price for you? Or are you gonna help me give him the chance that he deserves?”

Doyle sat silently for a full minute and then began to shake his head. Reid’s heart sank.

“Chloe hired a man that I used to employ, Lachlan McDermott. He contacted me just before I arrived in Virginia. He has Declan.” Doyle declared.

“How were you supposed to contact him?” Reid asked quickly. “What did Chloe want in exchange for Declan?”

“She just wanted me. It was supposed to be a straight trade but she doesn’t know that Lachlan and I have history.”

“What sort of history?” Prentiss asked.

“He was ambitious and cold-blooded. Ideal for my organization until the day that he thought he could run it better. I put a bullet in his kneecap and banned any of my associates from working with him. I shoulda put him down altogether but, frankly, it seemed like more effort than he deserved at the time. He still managed to carve out a small niche in the business, but I imagine that he wants to use me as leverage for whatever remains of the Valhalla syndicate. Chloe most likely wants to torture me, but Lachlan needs me alive, at least for the immediate future. Either way I’ve got to show myself to get my son back.”

“Do you know how to get in touch with him?” Reid asked.

“I have a mobile number to call.”

Reid looked to Prentiss and she stood immediately, her brain clicking over the tactical options.

“I’ll go get Hotch, and we’ll need Garcia to set up a trace on the call.”

“It’ll be a burner phone.” Reid warned.

“We have to try.”

Prentiss raced out the door leaving the two men alone in the interrogation room. Reid paced along the far wall and tried to ignore Doyle.

“Want some advice?” Doyle’s voice sounded wet from his bloody nose. Reid hoped that it hurt.

“From you? Not really.”

“Get away from her, boy-o.”

“Thanks, but we work together - that’s all.”

“You can keep trying to sell that little tale but it isn’t too convincing.” Reid heard the sound of Doyle’s chair scrape and he looked over to see the man sitting close to the table once more. “Despite the pretty speech that she made about my son, she’s not capable of love. I believe her when she says that she cares about Declan - maybe he’s the only thing besides herself that she does care about - and given my choices, I’d rather have him with her than Chloe. It doesn’t mean that she’s worth believing though.”

Reid stared at Doyle from across the room. “Pardon me if I don’t wish to take pointers about emotional integrity from someone who held a woman hostage for her baby.”

Doyle chuckled. The blood under his nose made bubbles with his breath.

“Sure thing, boy-o. No doubt that’s a wise move. But speaking as a fellow traveler in that… _terrain_ that you want to claim for your own, it isn’t worth it. Sure, she’ll make you feel like the only one she’s ever craved… she’ll get you so wrapped around her, with your cock so far up inside that you can’t tell where she ends and you begin. You’ll start to feel that you can’t bear the idea of being alone - even though that’s exactly what you are because she isn’t really there. She’s just barren inside. You’ll ache for that something - whatever it is - that she’ll always keep just out of your reach. And when you finally come to your senses - when you realize that you’ve fallen victim to her sex like some brute animal - she’ll turn on you and strike you down. She’ll dismantle you and pack you up onto her shelf and she won’t even think of you when she meets the next guy.”

Doyle smiled, a sad sort of smile, but his eyes glittered with hate. Reid suddenly realized that he didn’t hate Emily. He couldn’t even imagine hating someone as much as Doyle did while still wanting them. And Doyle’s want was as obvious as the blood on his face. Reid stood away from the wall and walked slowly towards the table in the center of the room. He leaned over it, the stark lighting casting long shadows down his face as he spoke quietly to Doyle.

“You’re right, of course: I want her in the worst possible way. She makes me feel all of those things and more - it doesn’t take much to see that. But there’s also more.”

Reid rose up, forcing Doyle to look at him and into the lights above.

“She’s saved my life more times than I can count on this job, and sometimes it was just with a kind word or a laugh. I’ve seen her empathize with victims, and pursue targets beyond all good sense and personal regard in order to get justice for someone else. When she says that she’ll protect your son, you can depend on it - she’d die to give Declan the life that he deserves even though she hates you and everything you stand for.”

Doyle smirked at Reid’s naïveté but he continued on, if only to have the satisfaction of saying everything he felt to another person.

“And maybe you’re right: maybe she’s incapable of love. But she’s earned mine with 6 years of experience and ample quality of character that I believe you simply cannot fake. I’ll love her until I draw my last breath regardless of how she feels.”

Reid began pacing the room again.

“As for you, you’re directing your hate at the wrong person. I pity you: you had a good woman but you didn’t give her a reason to care about you. She was there because it was her assignment, but, in the end, her decisions were driven by _your_ actions. Anyone in law enforcement can tell you a story about when they’ve been tempted to look the other way because of their feelings for a suspect. You could’ve changed her mind. You could’ve changed your ways. She might have made you a better man if you’d let her. But you didn’t and now you sit there and whine about how she took you apart using the same psychology that you’ve lived your whole life by. That was what she was _trained_ to do. It’s just your bad luck that she’s so good at it.”

Reid turned in mid stride as if he’d suddenly remembered that he was talking to an actual person.

“And the best way that you can think to come at her is to physically threaten her? The best that you can do to _me_ is try to bait me with crude and obvious challenges to my masculinity? If you think that you were treated like a brute animal it’s because you lacked the insight to be worthy of a more sophisticated approach, Doyle. Quite frankly, I think that she wasted almost a year of her life running after you - your motives are so obvious that you’re only a danger to yourself.”

Doyle looked stunned and then rageful. He was just about to launch into another attack when someone knocked at the interrogation room door. Reid opened it and saw another agent with a first aid kit.

“We got a call about an accident?”

“Yes. Mr. Doyle fell into the table.” Reid answered flatly. “He’s a bit bloody.”

The agent didn’t register anything as he moved past Reid into the room.

“Stay with him until S.S.A. Hotchner arrives. We’ll have to arrange a transport for him.”

The agent nodded and Reid closed the door behind him. He braced his arm against it and breathed out heavily. Then, he schooled his features, and headed down the hall towards the bullpen.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Yes… I agree, I don’t see how we can avoid using him at this point.” Prentiss spoke quickly into her phone. “No, I believe that I’ve made him see the light about Declan… Thank you, sir. No, Reid is still in there with him…”

Prentiss turned and looked through the one-way glass. Reid was leaning across the table at Doyle and Doyle was giving him his full attention. Prentiss frowned and turned the volume on the intercom up.

_…maybe you’re right: maybe she’s incapable of love._

Hotch continued speaking to her over the phone but she was no longer paying attention. She made some quick, noncommittal noises into her cell.

_…love her until I draw my last breath regardless of how she feels._

Prentiss’s mouth fell open. She had to get off the phone. Now.

“I’ve gotta go, Hotch… okay, yeah… see you in a few.”

She thumbed her phone off and got as close to the glass as she could. One lover talking to another was never a good situation. She was frustrated that she couldn’t see Reid’s face.

_… You could’ve changed her mind. You could’ve changed your ways. She might have made you a better man if you’d let her._

Jesus, did Reid really think that she could’ve ever fallen for Doyle? Just the thought of it made her skin crawl.

_… what she was trained to do. It’s just your bad luck that she’s so good at it._

Reid was standing up for her. He _believed_ in her despite everything. Though he was clearly disgusted by her actions in the Doyle investigation, he still thought that she was good at her job. That wasn’t a reaction she had expected, not given the load of b.s. she had fed him less than 12 hours ago…

_… bait me with crude and obvious challenges to my masculinity? If you think that you were treated like a brute animal it’s because you lacked the insight to be worthy of a more sophisticated approach…_

Prentiss winced as she remembered what Doyle had said about her in front of Reid. She could _feel_ him becoming enraged and increasingly uncomfortable beside her. Despite his implication that he had risen above it, she knew that Doyle had succeeded. Guilt seeped out of her that she could make him vulnerable to a base creature like Doyle in that way. It was so obvious but also devastatingly effective, especially on Reid who already had hang-ups about attraction and intimacy. 

She watched their body language as Reid continued to talk. With every word, Reid solidified his position of authority over Doyle. Whether he believed it or not, he was exerting a _force_ of complete frankness towards the other man. And Doyle was buying it. She stared in amazement as Doyle’s face melted from smug satisfaction to stunned disbelief and then hostile denial.

Reid made Doyle _believe_ in her goodness. With only the power of words and in a few short minutes, he had altered another man’s faith in what he _thought_ that he knew. It was startlingly simple and yet profoundly hard to accomplish, but Reid had planted a seed that would grow and mutate all on it’s own - impossible to eradicate or to control: an idea. That idea would foster doubt, inferiority; maybe even shame in Doyle’s mind, and it would outlast any shattered limb or bruise. It was Reid’s version of an ass kicking, but no one would know the damage but he and Doyle. And her.

Prentiss watched as Reid talked to another agent and then left the room. She cracked open the door of the observation room unsure if she should try to catch him or not, when she saw him sag against the closed cell door in exhaustion. She waited in the darkness behind the door until he had composed himself and moved on. She didn’t realize that she was holding her breath as she walked out of the room and watched him slowly disappear down the corridor ahead of her.


	10. The Deal

“You ready, baby girl?”

_For you I’m always ready, boo - any time, any where._

Morgan rolled his eyes and smiled as he spoke into the handset of his cell. “Speaker phone, Garcia…”

_As if they don’t already now about my secret geek-girl passion for chocolate love…_

“All right.” Hotch spoke up. “Let’s focus.”

Hotch dialed a number into a conference line that had been brought into Doyle’s interrogation room. The number rang as the team stood around wearing various looks of concerned seriousness. Prentiss and J.J. stood close to Hotch and were the only ones who made eye contact with Doyle. Reid had retaken his position against the far wall of the room. Morgan was close by maintaining an open line to Garcia in her tech den as she attempted to trace the outgoing call. He occasionally spared Reid a sideways glance; Reid knew his friend well enough to read that as discomfort. Morgan was picking up on something but didn’t have enough of a hold on it yet to broach the subject with Reid.

“Remember the script, Doyle.” Hotch leaned in and whispered over the conference phone.

Doyle nodded and then smiled at Prentiss in a knowing way. Reid’s hands knotted into fists inside his pockets at the sight. He hated that they had a secret, sly language even after all of this time. He hated that Prentiss understood Doyle, but not him. He’d never been anything less than honest with her, but she still felt more comfortable dealing with inveterate sociopaths like Ian Doyle. The bitterness of that thought was tearing chunks of him away; hopelessly unbalanced, he felt like a dying particle bleeding away energy into a dark void.

The call connected.

_Yeah._

“Lachlan?”

_Doyle. I was wondering what was keeping you - it’s not like the boy’s getting any safer…_

“I want to speak to him.”

_Nah, I don’t think so. He’s out for cookies and ice cream with his ma anyway._

“Yer lyin’, Lachlan” Doyle leaned in closer to the phone and sneered. “Let me talk to my son.”

_No._

“Then, how can I know that he’s alive? That you even have him?”

_You can’t. It’s not my job to make you feel more at ease, Ian. Considering what happened to those 3 other kids, you might wanna quit the stalling and get on with making this deal._

There it was: tacit acceptance of responsibility for the 3 child murders. Reid closed his eyes and let out a long, slow breath. He, Morgan, and Garcia might still be charged with the murders, but if they were, _that_ statement would go a long way in creating reasonable doubt for them.

“Well, there’s a wrinkle there, see… the FBI’s got me.”

Morgan and J.J. scowled in exasperation. Hotch crossed his arms over his chest. This meant complications - it was never part of the plan to tell the kidnappers that law enforcement was involved. It guaranteed that however this went down now, it was going to go down _heavy_. Reid looked over at Prentiss and saw her smirk and shake her head slightly; she wasn’t surprised. Just another thing about Doyle’s personality that she knew and they didn’t.

There was a long break of silence from Lachlan. _Well, I guess yer son is dead then…_

“It doesn’t have to be that way.” Doyle spoke quickly. “These Yanks won’t give me up - that’s true - but you can still get what you want outta all this.”

_I’m listening._

“Give over Declan and Chloe to them, and I’ll give you what you need to take over the Valhalla syndicate.”

_No._

“Listen, Lachlan - we both know that Chloe just wants to kill me. Did you really do all of this so that she could satisfy her ‘female rage’? How much is that worth to you?”

There was silence over the phone.

“That’s what I thought. You don’t give a damn about Chloe, so giv’er over to the Americans, along with my son - buy yerself some time. I’ll sit down with you and give you everything that you need to pick up the ends of the syndicate and tie it back together.”

_Bollocks. Whatever you had has probably been picked over by Interpol for years now. It’s less than useless._

“Nah, son - my contacts, my connections - I always kept that in my head. Writing shit down just gets a lad into trouble. They had me for years and never got any of that outta me. You can have it - for Declan. _That’s_ the new deal.”

The silence in the interrogation room stretched out for so long that doubt started to push in on Doyle’s smugness, making his eyes dart about from one unfriendly face to another. _The deal’s not good enough to tempt Lachlan_ , Reid thought. _Too much risk for his slim chance of reward. He’d have to be desperate to…_

The phone crackled a little and then Lachlan cleared his throat.

_Deal. Dulles Airport, private strip 17, tail number B3756. Be there in one hour. The Yanks get Chloe and Declan and I get ta pick your brain. When I’m done, the Yanks can have ya - but I’m gone. I have a civilian flight crew aboard and I’m not above using them ta catch bullets._

Hotch frowned but nodded to Doyle. It’s not like he had many other options, and Lachlan’s plan favored their position more than his own. 

“Deal.” Doyle said.

_Doyle - Chloe’ll kill you and the boy if she gets a chance, regardless of the plan. It’s part of what drew me to this job. I dunno what would be more satisfying: getting your syndicate information or seeing that slag blow you away._

“Fuck you too, Lachlan.” Doyle enunciated.

Lachlan laughed and then hung up. Hotch turned the conference module off and turned to Morgan with an arched eyebrow.

“You get it, sweetness?” Morgan said into his phone.

_Of course I did. He’s not even scrambling it - he’s at Dulles airport, just like he said._

“Okay, thanks, Garcia.” Morgan thumbed off his phone and shrugged towards Hotch. “It seems just a little too easy, doesn’t it?”

“That’s Lachlan for ya.” Doyle smirked - back to his former self again. “A bloody brutal shite, but not much for strategy.”

Hotch glared at Doyle and then strode towards the interrogation room door. He opened it and spoke to the agent standing outside. “Take the prisoner to a holding cell pending transportation. I’ll be with you shortly.”

Doyle shuffled out with agents in tow and Hotch closed the door enclosing his team and their thoughts in the room.

“Why would Lachlan place himself at such a disadvantage?” J.J. asked.

“He doesn’t really have a choice now. Doyle was right: he didn’t take the risk of international kidnap and murder charges just so he could watch Chloe kill Doyle.” Hotch murmured.

“There’s no real profit in being a goon.” Morgan nodded in agreement with Hotch. “But reclaiming the Valhalla name and reputation? It feeds into his need for validation and authority.”

“He’s been identity-less since Doyle removed him from the syndicate. It might be worth any risk to get that back, and from the hands of the man who robbed him of it to begin with.” Reid continued. “It’s the only life he’s ever known but he’s a typical narcissist and has always felt that he deserved more. He’s bloodthirsty and intelligent enough to be more than mere muscle, but because the locus of his identity lies in the perception of others, he’ll never successfully wrangle the wills of men like himself as Doyle did.”

“Why?” J.J. looked to him.

“Because Doyle never cared about anyone. That’s what enabled him to become a ruthlessly efficient leader.” Reid couldn’t help but glance at Prentiss. “Despite his emotional connections to some, they are all just mirrors to re-enforce his self-actualizing pathology. Even the love that he claims to have for Declan is just a display meant to reflect back on him. Declan is just a piece of him. I mean, he hasn’t seen his son in almost 6 years… yet he acts as if the boy can’t survive without him.” 

Prentiss cleared her throat. “So, how do we want to play this?”

“Isolate the runway. Block the plane’s path and set up a perimeter around it. Dulles has it’s own police force, so we’ll have to deal with them, but it’s our case so we’ll assert jurisdiction.” Hotch nodded to J.J. who smiled, pleased at the prospect of putting her years of manipulating LEOs into action again. “We’ll need a tactical team to deal with the inevitable hostage situation. McDermott is not leaving that tarmac under any circumstances.”

Hotch looked around at his team and stood up a little straighter.

“The safe retrieval of Declan Doyle and the civilian flight crew is our primary objective. This _will_ get hairy so I expect all of you to keep your egos in check. There’s a lot riding on this but it’s simply not a factor in this situation. I hope that is clear to everyone. Now, suit up and reconvene in the motor pool in 15 minutes.”

The team filed out of the room in silence as they contemplated the task ahead of them. Reid held up at the door as he saw Hotch pull Prentiss aside.

“You’re in the background on this one, Prentiss.”

“Hotch-” She began but was silenced when he held up his hand.

“There’s just no way. You’re not FBI anymore - you’re not qualified to carry a weapon or make arrests. Plus, you have personal history with all of the players involved… even if regulations didn’t forbid it, good sense would.” Hotch sighed. “I know that I can’t keep you away, so you can ride along - but that’s it. Clear?”

Prentiss nodded and looked away, deflated.

“I’m sorry, Emily.” Hotch squeezed her arm. “Now, I’ve got to go update Strauss about all of this.”

Hotch turned and saw Reid lingering. He walked towards the door, blocking Reid’s view of Prentiss behind him.

“Shouldn’t you be getting ready, Reid?”

“Yes, sir.” Reid left the room without another word.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The team suited up while Hotch and J.J. arranged to get Doyle secured and transported to the airfield. Prentiss stood around and watched, feeling useless having neither a gun nor a Kevlar vest. She wasn’t an agent anymore; she, technically, didn’t exist. She felt something solid tap her back and turned to find Reid holding a vest with FBI emblazoned across it.

“Here. I keep my spare in my desk drawer.”

“Thanks.”

Prentiss strapped on the vest and immediately felt more at ease. The vest itself was just an illusion of protection - it was the symbol of being part of the team, of contributing to its forward momentum that counted. She realized how much being a part of the BAU had defined her for 6 years; much more so than any other agency she’d ever worked with. No doubt part of that was due to the connections she had made with her teammates. Even as Doyle began picking off her Interpol team one by one, she was aware of how much more she feared for the fate of her BAU team. It might have been the collaborative nature of the work, or the many close calls that she’d had with them, or maybe it was the nature of the cases that she dealt with, but her 6 years at the BAU had turned the team from allies to intimates in her mind. _This_ was who she was and where she belonged. Finally. 

Prentiss watched Reid strap on his own vest, and then check and re-check his weapon. It was obvious why she felt differently about him: he was another social castaway in search of a replacement family. He had formed strong bonds with the team just as she had, recognizing the inherent safety in numbers. Every member of the BAU was a freak in one form or another. You had to be to do the kind of work that they did. Most, like J.J. and Morgan, kept it well hidden, while others, like Hotch and Rossi, kept it locked down. Reid lived his life as openly as he could. Maybe he didn’t see the point in hiding what was so obvious to the world, or maybe he didn’t know how to hide it. Prentiss wished that she could be more like that; more at ease with who she really was. But family genes and experience had pushed her another way. 

What it really came down to was that he meant more to her because he was already a part of her and her beloved clan of freaks. There were so many things that she would never have to explain to him - he just _understood_. And yet, there was so much more about her that required explanation, and in the explaining she would appear distorted and alien. She was afraid of losing his understanding - she was afraid of being alone and unknown in the world again. Somehow, the idea of pushing him away seemed less painful than being shunned for whom she really was. Part of her couldn’t believe that Reid would ever do that, but another part of her wondered how he couldn’t.

Reid looked up and saw her staring at him. “You okay?”

She nodded, trying to replace her expression with something more… expected. Reid looked around quickly, and then stooped and retrieved his back-up piece from an ankle holster. He checked the safety and then swung the Glock 9mm towards her, pommel out.

“Take this too.” He whispered.

Prentiss took the gun and checked the magazine, the chamber, and then double-checked the safety before tucking it into her waistband at her back. She looked up at him but his expression was blank. She arched an eyebrow and waited.

“I won’t have you out there unprotected.” He said finally. “I don’t care if it’s against regulations.”

“Thanks, Reid. Again.” She murmured, trying to hide the sudden swell of tenderness that she felt towards him.

“Just… try not to shoot anybody unless it’s absolutely necessary.” He mumbled and turned towards the elevators. “I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Reid’s knee hurt. He’d been crouching behind an abandoned baggage trailer for 10 minutes and his knee was starting to ping like radar. The rest of the team was set up behind two fleet SUVs, one of which held Doyle and Prentiss. The Dulles police force was spread out in a semi-circle surrounding McDermott’s private jet. The tactical team was still setting up sharp shooters with good site lines on local outbuildings, but the plane was a considerable distance from any of them making sniper response less accurate.

Reid shifted his weight again to ease the throb. Just his luck that he had a talent for reading lips and Hotch wanted eyes on McDermott. Now, he was huddled behind a metal box that was small enough to leave him exposed if he stood, but just big enough that he couldn’t sit behind it and still view the players. It also rankled a little that no one considered him a strong enough shot to be set up in a better spot; while he was closer to the plane than everyone else, his angle was too acute to provide him with a real chance of taking anyone out.

 _\-- All right people --_ Hotch’s voice crackled over the comm. unit. _\-- Tactical is set up and additional SWAT teams and emergency services are standing by back at the main terminal. All airport staff have pulled back, so it’s just us, the hostages, and the targets out here. Stay calm and watch your background. No one fires without authorization. --_

As if on cue, the jet’s main door opened out onto an elevated stairway that had been rolled up against the plane. Movement flashed from the gloom beyond the plane’s white body, but it was impossible to determine what it was. A small, thin face appeared partially hidden behind the door, a rifle mussel parallel to her cheek.

“Where’s Doyle?” She yelled.

“He’s here - with us, Chloe.” It was Hotch.

“Send him out!”

More movement happened and then another face appeared on the opposite side of the doorway with another rifle - McDermott.

“We need to see Declan, Chloe. We need you to send him out.”

“That isn’t the deal.” Chloe yelled from the door.

“This is the only deal, now.” Hotch responded.

The team held their ground and their breath behind the fleet vehicles. Prentiss and Doyle remained inside the SUV, waiting. Chloe looked back towards McDermott and had a quick back and forth with him. Reid’s lip reading skills were rusty and his angle wasn’t ideal but it looked as if McDermott told her that he’d cover her while the exchange was made. Chloe glared at McDermott and then disappeared from the doorframe. Reid held his breath and tried to remember the techniques that he’d honed at his weekly firing range visits. _Deep breath. Clear your mind. Take a moment and focus. You only need one shot…_

Chloe reappeared at the jet’s door, her rifle slung across her chest as she pointed a handgun to the head of a wide-eyed boy. Determination etched into her face as she gave McDermott one last dirty look and then stepped out onto the elevated stairs.

“Right.” She shouted and clutched the boy closer. “Where’s Doyle?”

Prentiss opened the SUV door slowly and stepped out. Doyle followed her, a smug smirk still pinned to his face despite his circumstances. Reid felt like shooting the man himself. He waved to Chloe, his hands cuffed together.

“Hullo, luv.”

“Oh, do me a favor…” Chloe sneered and pressed the mussel of her gun into Declan’s head. The boy cried out and she shook him to shut him up. The team’s anxiety flooded through the air as gun grips flexed and site lines were re-confirmed.

“Okay, okay,” Doyle raised his hands. “Whatever you want.”

“Get yer arse to the stairs, Ian. Quit larkin’ about.”

Prentiss nodded and two Dulles police officers in full riot gear appeared on either side of Doyle and walked him across the tarmac. Reid willed Prentiss to get back in the SUV, or to take cover behind it, but she stood still instead. _Dammit, Em, take cover!_

Doyle started to slowly climb the stairway. He stopped on the fourth step and waited.

“C’mon!” Chloe yelled.

“Let ‘em go, Chloe. I’ll come to you, I swear it.”

Chloe looked around again, her eyes more frantic than before. It was easy to see that her emotions were in full control of her now; her actions could turn on a dime. McDermott nodded to her again, trying to calm the situation, but he held his position safely behind the plane’s doorframe. Chloe took a few steps forward and then unceremoniously shoved Declan down the stairs towards Doyle. The boy looked back, unable to process his captor’s intent. Chloe raised her gun at him.

“Get!” She yelled.

 _\-- Everyone stay calm. --_ Hotch warned over their comm. units.

Declan started down the stairs, first hesitantly, and then at a run. Doyle met him halfway and grabbed him with his cuffed hands.

 _\-- What is he doing? --_ Morgan growled.

Doyle leaned in and smiled at his son. The boy looked newly terrified. Doyle mouthed something at the boy and smiled again as he ruffled his hair.

“He’s telling him that he’s a brave boy. He’s proud of him.” Reid whispered into his comm. unit.

Reid spared a glance in Prentiss’s direction and saw her rigid with anxiety, her hands in tight fists at her sides. It was no use wishing that she were elsewhere, he knew that she’d stay out in the open until she reached the boy. _Jeez, Em, you’re killing me…_

“Ian!” Chloe yelled from the top of the stairs, her patience at an end. “Move it!”

Doyle stared at Chloe. He rubbed Declan’s shoulders and then pushed the boy past him down the stairs. He turned and watched him go, then gave Prentiss a wistful look. Reid’s heart rioted in his chest. _Don’t look at her that way - like she’s the salvation you never thought you’d ever get! You don’t deserve that feeling…_ He breathed out suddenly and tried to refocus but he just couldn’t get over that look. His finger itched to turn his sites on Doyle and squeeze the trigger. The impulse narrowed his vision until Doyle was all he saw. He’d never felt such uncomplicated rage towards another person before - it was breathtaking. A fleeting movement on the periphery broke his blood vision: Prentiss moved in and caught Declan as he reached the base of the stairs. She scooped him up and ran back towards the SUV before the Dulles officers could set up to flank her.

 _\-- Cover Prentiss! --_ Hotch growled across the comm.

Things moved within the space of a heartbeat. Chloe tore her eyes away from Doyle to watch Prentiss flee with Declan. Then she looked back to McDermott who, at that moment, gave the slightest of nods in the direction of Doyle. Reid froze as he watched the betrayal wash over Chloe’s face, and then was enervated again as she turned and shot Doyle just above the collar of his bulletproof vest. Doyle launched backward and somersaulted down the stairway until he landed on the tarmac, splayed out as arterial blood quickly formed a pool around him. _Oh nononononononono…_

A shot rang out from behind the fleet vehicles and Chloe collapsed, rolling down the stairs to end up on top of Doyle’s body at the base. It could’ve been Hotch or Morgan… it didn’t really matter. The only thing that did matter was the sudden eruption of contagious gunfire that followed. Despite orders being yelled by several people across comm. channels, hysteria seemed to be the prevailing command. McDermott started spraying the tarmac and fleet vehicles with semi-automatic fire, finding himself with nothing left to lose.

_Emily!_

Reid rose from his covered position and strained to find her. She wasn’t behind the SUV, but in front of it, her body curled protectively around Declan with his Glock in her hand. While McDermott was focused on the agents behind the fleet cars, ricochets were pinging off in dozens of unpredictable directions. Prentiss cowered, unable to look up and focus long enough to get a shot off. Dulles officers were trying to get to her and the boy, but none were brave enough to dash out into the open under semi-automatic fire.

Reid felt his pulse bursting through his skull and behind his eyes. All calm, zen-like firing range practices went straight out the window. He stood and fired directly at McDermott. Still safely behind the rim of the plane’s doorframe, McDermott twisted and fired in Reid’s direction. He squeezed off a few more shots to draw Lachlan’s attention. A fleeting movement told him that Dulles officers were scrambling to Prentiss’s position.

He breathed out and then hitched sideways as something hot and determined punched him to the ground. His head smacked against the tarmac and his vision blurred. He tried to breathe in but found that his lungs refused to respond, as if they no longer existed. He gasped desperately and tried again, scratching at his collar as if his shirt was suddenly suffocating him. Pain lanced up his left side, bouncing across ribs and streaking across his chest. The pain was like the quick onset of one of his headaches except 10 times more powerful. He arched his back off the ground in a last ditch effort to breathe, which he managed despite the painful fireworks in his chest. His breath rattled out of him in awkward, wet, gulps. He tasted blood everywhere.

The gunfire continued around him, but it no longer seemed directed at him. He sucked in a huge, wheezing breath and rolled to his side. Electrical shocks lit up his left side and he cried out, which resulted in a spasm of bloody coughing. His fingers dug into the tarmac as he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to ride out the pain. The white flashes behind his eyelids told him that it wouldn’t be long before he lost consciousness. He wheezed again and opened his eyes: he lay perpendicularly to the plane with a sharp angle towards the doorframe, but he had fallen clear of the baggage unit. He was still easily the closest to McDermott.

Dulles police and the tactical unit were drawing McDermott’s fire away from the fleet vehicles. His head ducked in and out of the doorframe as he sprayed suppressing fire in various directions. He never looked in Reid’s direction.

Reid flexed his right hand and became aware that he was still holding his .38. He looked down at himself; his left side was bloody and he appeared to be leaking from somewhere under his arm. He felt wetness stream down his chin and tasted blood in his mouth. His breathing was labored. Collapsed lung? Perhaps a broken rib had nicked an artery? He didn’t have time to ponder it. He flexed his grip on his gun and raised himself up onto his injured side. He hissed as his nerve endings revolted, but he managed to lift his right arm and hold it steady as he lined up his sites to the plane doorframe. McDermott’s head popped out and away once, twice… Reid squeezed his eyes shut and then reopened them taking in as big a breath as he dared without blacking out. _You only need one shot._

McDermott’s head appeared a third time. Reid released his breath and squeezed the trigger just as Lachlan turned to face him. McDermott’s head snapped backwards and he dropped behind the elevated stair wall, the only sign of Reid’s success was the fine spray of blood that now painted the side of the plane.

Reid fell back again and let his whole body go limp. The shooting ended abruptly and soon the air was filled with shouting instead of bullets. Reid closed his eyes and focused on breathing - he didn’t care about anything beyond his next gasp of air. He began to feel warm, and then cold, in waves and deduced that he was losing blood. He hoped that someone would show up soon and put a stop to that.

“Reid!” It was Morgan. “Hotch, over here! We need paramedics _now!_ ”

Reid smiled to himself. _Oh good, Morgan was going to take everything in hand…_

“Okay, kid, hold it together for me.” Morgan pressed something against his left side, just under his arm. Reid hissed against the pain and it came out as a gurgle. “Jesus…”

“Think my lung has collapsed.” He gasped.

“Reid, stop thinking and just lie still. Maybe you could concentrate on not bleeding so much.”

“’Kay.”

Reid heard Morgan snort, as if he wanted to laugh but the situation seemed inappropriate for it. Then he felt his mood abruptly shift to panic.

“HOTCH!”

“Morgan!” It was Prentiss’s voice. “What is - _oh shit!_ ”

She dropped to her knees beside him. He felt the added pressure of her hands over Morgan’s against his wound. He wondered if he should tell them that that wasn’t really helping matters.

“Spencer!” Her voice came out in an unsteady whisper. “Where’s Hotch? Where the fuck are the EMTs?!”

“I dunno.” Morgan was quietly freaking out in a way that Reid had never experienced before. “I gotta go get somebody… we need help…”

Prentiss removed Morgan’s hands and replaced them with her own. “Go… GO! I’ll stay with him.”

Reid heard Morgan’s boots as they pounded against the tarmac growing fainter with every stride. He heard his own wet breathing in and out, and then he heard Prentiss’s ragged breaths as if she’d just run a marathon to get to him. In the distance, he caught the high wail of sirens.

“S’okay.” He coughed. “S’okay, Em, they’re coming…”

“Spencer,” He felt her lips brush his forehead. They were quivering. “I should be comforting you, not the other way ‘round.”

“You seem more worried than I am.” He coughed and opened his eyes. She looked down at him, her face white and her pupils blown out in panic. “Situation is serious, but… I have no intention of dying today.”

“You’re unbelievable.” She murmured but he couldn’t tell if it was a compliment or an insult.

He shifted and pain stabbed him down into the tarmac. He swallowed a cry that turned into a jag of coughing. It was so hard to breathe… like someone was sitting on his chest…

“Jesus, Spence!” She begged. “Please stay still. _Please_.”

He looked up at her through his own blurred vision and saw tears streaking down her face. Before he could think about it, his right hand reached up and smoothed away their path along one cheek.

“Don’t cry, Em. Today’s a good day.”

Her brow creased in confusion. “What?”

“Declan?” He coughed.

“He’s fine.”

“And Doyle?”

Her eyes hardened and her mouth thinned. She shook her head once.

Reid smiled and closed his eyes. “You’re free, Emily. You are finally free.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been running from Doyle since you left Interpol.” He gasped and took a series of small breaths to avoid another coughing fit. “Running from the things you’ve done… what that case made you into… but he’s gone now. You can start fresh… Go anywhere, be anyone you want… it’s a second chance.”

Talking was too much and the coughing caught up with him. He spat up more blood and with every hitch, his side sent out fresh shockwaves of pain. The series repeated itself for nearly half a minute, and when the pain ebbed and he could focus again he discovered her trembling and whispering to herself.

“Spencer Reid - I swear to God - if you die on me I will never, ever fucking forgive you.” 

“Not gonna die.” He grabbed her hands that were covering his wound. “Listen to the sirens…”

She lifted her tear-stained face and looked out in the direction of the sound. Whatever she saw had an immediate effect on her as she began to nod and straightened her back. She looked back at him and forced a smile on her face.

“They’re coming.”

“Good.” He croaked and squeezed her hands.

Her expression became serious suddenly. “I am capable of love, Spencer.”

She stared at him and he wondered if she was going to say anything else. His breath bubbled in and out of him loudly. He couldn’t think of anything to add and he wasn’t certain that he would be able to get it out if he did. Her eyes lost their focus a little and she looked down and concentrated on their hands covering his wound.

“I just don’t know what… I can’t _trust_ myself with it.”

He sucked in a wet gurgle and asked the question that had been burning within him for 6 months. “Do you trust me, Emily?”

Her eyes locked with his. “Unreservedly. You are the only one, Spencer.”

“Then leave it here with me.” His hand left hers and tapped the left side of his chest. “And I’ll take care of it for you.”

The sirens were almost on top of them now, and he was glad - he didn’t think that he could continue talking any longer. The waves of warm and cold had shifted to mostly cold, and he had started shivering. The vibrations were causing him pain and his breathing was becoming more difficult. He could still focus on Prentiss but everything else seemed to have faded into the background. A new voice - lower and more authoritative - entered the fray, and then a new face appeared next to Prentiss. It wasn’t until he saw her reaction to it that he realized it was Hotch staring down at him. _That was funny… how could I not recognize him?_

Through the cool fog that surrounded him, he felt new hands pulling at him. Someone stuck something in his arm, and then placed something over his nose and mouth. He didn’t like it but felt too tired to do anything about it. He tried to focus on Prentiss’s eyes, but he was summarily lifted away and onto something, and then launched into another place that was shiny and cramped. He mustered his remaining energy and lifted his right hand out. _What is this? Where am I?_

Voices filtered in and out of the fog, urgent and commanding above the droning wail that rocked him like a boat in a storm. He was so cold now. Cold air on his face… his hands and feet felt numb and hard. He let his hand fall and tried to twitch his fingers… surely it was just a circulation issue… he remembered a silly movie that he’d seen once: _“wiggle your big toe…”_

Something grabbed his fallen hand and squeezed hard. The contact burned and even though his instinct told him to recoil, he squeezed back with everything he had left. The burning warmed him - not enough to stop his full body shivering - but enough to thaw his fingers a little. Little pinpricks excited the surface of his hand. It felt glorious. He looked over and she appeared through the fog, all fuzzy-edged and worried, holding his hand. He closed his eyes and felt a laugh bubble up through the blood and the fluids that were shutting down his lungs. He couldn’t stop it and didn’t even try. The coughing quickly followed and he felt her squeeze his hand hard enough to fracture something.

“Don’t be alarmed.” He wheezed through the mask and the blood. “I mean it this time.”

And then he thankfully passed out.


	11. Taking Care

There are advantages to appearing feeble. After Reid had argued at length about his absolute right to disregard his physician’s advice about pain medication _and_ the prudence of early release, he was left in the ill-conceived position of having to dress himself with a half-healed suture up his left side and 2 cracked ribs. He spent several minutes just staring at his pants wondering if there was any possible way that he could hail a cab home in just his boxers. A series of nurses breezed through his semi-private room obvious in their complete lack of attention towards him, until finally a young one gave in to his huffing and shirtsleeve tangling. 

“Thank you.” He murmured as she handed him a hospital bag containing the rest of his belongings.

“Do you have someone?” She asked.

“I-I.. pardon?”

She rolled her eyes at him but he also noted two splashes of pink that rose to her cheeks. “I mean, do you have someone to pick you up? To help you at home with wound dressing?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Sure, okay.” The nurse smiled. “You were just helping me out by giving me something to do a few minutes ago when you needed help getting into your pants?”

It took a moment before both of them began to blush at her statement. He wasn’t good at picking up on this sort of behavior in general, but Morgan was always ribbing him about the effect he had on people. If he had been a different man, he could probably walk away with the nurse’s number in his pocket. If he had been a different man and didn’t have his guts and his brain in knots over whatever lingered between him and Emily Prentiss…

She’d been by - with the team - to see him after his operation. Her relief was palpable, and that was something, he guessed. He’s spent more conscious time than he should have rerunning his foggy memories of that day on the tarmac in his mind. He wondered why he selected his moments of blunt honesty as he did. Why had he chosen that moment to tell a woman who had all but rejected him that he would always care for her? Despite his protestations to the contrary, some part of him obviously felt that he might die, and that he needed to get a few things off his chest first. Why did he have this impulse to just _be_ there for her no matter what? He shook his head and wondered how many more sucker punches he was going to have to suffer before he learned his lesson.

“You okay?” The nurse asked as they shuffled down the corridor at his speed to the admin. desk.

“Yeah. I’ll be fine.” He sighed. “I just really want to go home.”

“That’s understandable. Hospitals are alien places, even to those of us who spend our whole lives in them.”

Reid thought of his mother, and how the nurse was correct on so many levels. He’d asked Hotch not to tell Diana about his surgery or the incident at Dulles. He’d broach it in his own time, soften the impact and make it easier for her. She worried for him anyway, and he didn’t want her to obsess over things that she couldn’t prevent.

The nurse went behind the desk and found his release form. She pushed it across the desk and indicated where he had to sign. He went through the paperwork on autopilot as his mind clicked through random thoughts. One rose to the surface: his impulse to care for Prentiss was similar to his impulse towards Diana. But Prentiss wasn’t fragile - she didn’t require buffering from the world - so why couldn’t he let it go and treat her with the same casual autonomy that she bestowed on him?

“Goodbye, Dr. Reid.” The nurse broke his revelry with a sweet smile. She was quite pretty, he thought.

“Spencer!”

Reid turned and saw Prentiss walking towards him from the entrance to his room. “Where are you going? I was just coming to visit…”

“Hi.” He tried to wave and then caught himself before his ribs complained. The cute nurse was staring at Prentiss; her sweet smile was gone.

“Are you checking out?” Prentiss asked with an arched eyebrow when she caught up to him at the admin. desk.

“Against medical advice.” The nurse mumbled behind them. Reid turned to face her and received a dirty look for his efforts. The nurse collected her clipboard and wandered away in a hurry. _Huh,_ he thought, _I’m really no good at reading women at all._

“Is that wise, Spencer?” Prentiss looked concerned.

“Wise or not, it’s happening.” He winced as he picked up his bag of belongings.

“Lemme guess… no pain meds either?”

Reid’s eyes flicked to hers and then away again. Prentiss sighed.

“You know, you can be such a hard case sometimes… do you have a ride at least?”

“I was going to hail a cab.”

“Riiiiight. Because you can’t let anyone help you out…”

“You’d know something about that.” He snapped and then regretted it when he saw her reaction. She went rigid and looked away. After a moment of silence, she cleared her throat and reached for the bag that he was clutching.

“I’ll give you a lift home.” She murmured. “Wait for me out front.”

…

The first half of the ride was spent in awkward silence. Reid didn’t know why he had lashed out so suddenly; it’s not as if he didn’t have a point, but it just wasn’t a useful one to make anymore. A heavy mood pushed him deeper into the passenger seat.

“I’m sorry, Emily. For snapping at you.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s just that… what I said… at Dulles that day…”

“I’m going to New York.” She interrupted without looking at him. “That’s why I came to the hospital today.”

“W-when?” All of the air disappeared from his lungs.

“My flight’s early this evening.”

He drew in a deep, bracing breath and was stabbed by both his battered rib cage and his bruised heart. “Is this… is it a permanent move?”

“I have to meet the U.S. liaison for Interpol to close out all of the Doyle-related investigation files. He’s in New York doing something at the U.N. - this is convenient for him.” She paused as she made a left through a busy intersection. “Afterwards… who knows? I’ll have to come back here and face some sort of review hearing through the Bureau, but who knows how that will go as I’m no longer considered an agent…”

“Yeah, Hotch tells me that OPR is having a field day with all of the infractions related to this case. It’s like they’re Barnum & Bailey and we’ll all get our chance to perform for them in the center ring.”

“Probably not you. I hear that they’re giving you a commendation for drawing McDermott’s fire away from us. And for that shot. I gotta say, everyone’s talking about that shot, Spencer…”

Reid looked out the window miserably. He didn’t care about the commendation, the new respect for his tactical skills, or even his continued career at the Bureau. She was leaving. Maybe it was the right thing - the healthy thing - for her to do, but he couldn’t help thinking that his life would be pale and thin without her in it from now on.

“You’re one hell of an investigator, Spencer.” He could tell that she was looking at him but he didn’t turn to face her. “If people knew everything that you did in this case… finding me, making the connections to Declan, facing down Doyle despite your personal feelings, risking everything for _all_ of us that day… well, they’re going to get an idea now. You’re the real deal, Spencer. I hope that you seriously consider becoming an active field agent again. The unit needs you.”

“The unit got along just fine without me for 6 months.”

“No, it didn’t. Ask anyone there. Ask anyone whose come to know you and then done without you: you leave an unmistakable void when you’re gone.”

They were stopped at a light and he finally turned to look at her. She was soft and conflicted all over. He hadn’t seen her like that in ages and studied every inch to save away for later contemplation. This might not be the last time that he saw Emily Prentiss, but it might be the last time he saw her _like this_. He’d miss the strange ever-changing darkness of her eyes - the way everything else was just a frame to feature them, and he’d miss the way her expression was never quite what he expected from her. He’d miss her mind and her hands and her lips. He’d miss her nerdy excitement and her cool reserve and he’d miss the way she used to conspiratorially lean over his desk to hatch plots with him. His heart banged around in his chest erratically and he decided that he had to stop cataloguing everything about her or else he’d end up back at the hospital again.

She leaned in a little closer, as far as her seat beat would allow. “That’s why you scared me so much that day at Dulles. I really thought that we were going to lose you.”

The light changed and she was forced to turn her attention back to the road. They were just a few blocks from his apartment now. His time was running out.

“I told you not to panic.” He whispered. “And you said that you trusted me.”

“Emotion isn’t logical. It can be controlled for a while, but it can’t be told how to behave.” She murmured. “And I do trust you.”

They continued the last few blocks in silence again. Prentiss pulled up in front of Reid’s building and he made an effort to get out before she had a chance to help him. Some traits die hard.

“Spencer…”

“I’m fine, Emily. Really.”

She looked at him like she was lost. Desperation flicked across her face and then was gone; it was so fast, he almost missed it. She leaned across her seat and stared at him on the sidewalk through the car window.

“What about your dressings? Will you be all right with them? I can come up… help you…”

“I’m good until this evening. If I have an issue, I’ll call Morgan, I promise.”

“Okay.” She continued staring at him and he realized that he’d have to end this. 

“Well, good luck in New York. I’m sure that it’ll be fine, whatever happens. Drop me a line when you come back.”

_IF you come back…_

He turned towards his building, unable to say the words ‘good bye’. Before he opened the lobby doors, he looked back and saw her still parked at the curb.

“Emily,” He called and her head appeared in the window again. “Take advantage of your second chance. You deserve it.”

There. That was as close to ‘good bye’ and he was ever going to get.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reid sat on his couch with an untouched glass of bourbon in his hand while he ignored the TV. He’d been in the exact same position for over an hour, ever since Morgan had gone home. The dressings had been a trial after all and Reid had to reach out to his friend for help. Emily would’ve been proud.

His heart throbbed at the thought and he closed his eyes as he waited for the sensation to pass over him. He had experienced 37 random thoughts in the past hour that had led back to her, and had experienced 37 stabs of chest pain as a result. This was number 38. He was getting better at handling it. Maybe after a 1000 more attempts or so, he could handle his reaction to it in mixed company. Maybe. Until such time, the threat of sitting through a _Doctor Who_ marathon on SyFy was enough to drive Morgan from the apartment so that Reid could suffer in private.

“This is worse than the headaches.” He said out loud to himself. “The cause is obvious but I can’t seem to stop inviting the pain back.”

_You think that the cause of your headaches is really such a mystery?_

“I don’t know the cause.”

_Sure you do. Think about it, genius. It’s okay… I’ll wait._

“But they started before she left.”

_And you think that generalized anxiety about your feelings for her would manifest itself differently than it did after she disappeared?_

“Well… no, maybe not…”

_Your subconscious mind is just as smart as you are. Just with less emotional hang-ups. Remember that._

“Then why haven’t I suffered a headache since the case ended?”

_Oh, I dunno. Getting shot, recovering from surgery, trying to give yourself mini heart attacks instead… pick a stressor._

He decided that his internal voice was a bit of a callous prick, and that he was also probably correct. His phone vibrated across the coffee table in front of him, and he spent several rings trying to negotiate a pain-free way to lean forward to retrieve it.

“Reid here.” He wheezed around his complaining ribs.

“Hey.” Her voice was soft and close, as if she was sitting next to him. His heart launched into number 39 for him.

“Hi.”

“Are you okay? You sound out of breath.”

“Oh, you know… the ribs are a bit of a problem. But only when I talk, move, breathe, or blink.”

“Sorry.”

“Nothing you can do about it. How is New York?”

“Same as it’s always been, I guess. I just got into the hotel.”

The conversation stalled. He didn’t know what to do he just knew that he didn’t want her to hang up. He just wanted a few more precious minutes of self-delusion. He could play at being a grown-up later.

“It’s good to hear your voice.” It was true but also ridiculous; he’d talked to her less than 4 hours ago.

“Yeah, it’s good to hear yours too. I didn’t like how we left things today. Call me a coward, but I thought that this might be easier over the phone.”

“What would be easier?”

He heard her take a deep breath, and when she spoke again he thought that he heard a faint tremble in her voice.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said to me at Dulles - all of it: how I’ve been running since I left Interpol, how Doyle changed me, about second chances… about your offer to care for the things that frighten me about myself…”

“And you’ve made a decision, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but it’s not the one you think.” She breathed heavily again. She was really nervous and it sharpened his attention.

“Just tell me, Em. Talk to me.”

“I trust you, so I have to trust you with this.” It seemed like she was convincing herself, not speaking to him. Then she got right to it.

“You know how I grew up, who my parents were… it was tough to make friends and my family was cold and distant when it came to love. I struggled for a long time to discover who I was.”

There was a long silence and he let it hang between them for as long as she needed.

“There was an incident when I was 15. I made the wrong choice because I wanted to fit in. And there were… consequences.”

“The pregnancy and then the abortion, right?” He said it as gently as he could.

“You _knew_ about that?”

“Rossi got really drunk one night in Des Moines. He told me a lot of things that he probably shouldn’t. That was one of them. Sorry.”

She was breathing rapidly and then pulled herself together and cleared her throat to continue.

“No need to apologize. It happened. Anyway, I moved past that and thought that I had handled it but then I went off to college. I met a man there - someone who forced me to make my own choices, to forge my own path for the first time. I realized that I was still that frightened identity-less child that I’d always been. Until him. I stretched and tested and blossomed, and felt alive for the first time ever.”

“You fell in love.” Reid added.

“Yes. I was solid and stable and fully realized. I felt invincible in a way that only a newly liberated 20 year old can feel. We got engaged and I felt myself moving forward on a path of my own making.”

She paused and he did as well. _Prentiss was engaged?!?_

“One night, he crossed the quad intersection against the light and was hit by a car. Just like that, he was gone, it was over, and my self-forged future disappeared right in front of me.”

“Oh Em…”

“It was random. It was just… life. But it produced in me the belief that relationships are temporary. He was the first person that I allowed to love me, and the pain of losing him - and the freedom that he represented - was so unreal that I opted to adopt the way of my parents: avoid anything but the most necessary of feelings.”

Reid’s mind was bombarded by questions. Was this really just about fear for her? The theory seemed too uncomplicated, too easy to expose. Her personal insecurity ran far deeper and more profoundly than he had previously guessed, but he suspected that there was more to her emotional avoidance. And why was she so surprised by his non-reaction to her confession of an unwanted pregnancy? Did she think that he was so judgmental?

“I changed majors, and did what any overachieving single child would do in the face of an obstacle. I eventually became the youngest undercover field agent in Interpol’s anti-terrorism division. By the time the Valhalla case came along, I had a well-known reputation for career ambition and man-eating appetites in my personal life.”

Reid cringed at her self-assessment; even during her tenure at the BAU she had developed a reputation for liking men but never being seen with the same one twice. Of course, if he really thought about it, he couldn’t recall seeing or hearing about more than half a dozen guys in that time, which didn’t strike him as a voracious appetite at all.

“The Valhalla operation wasn’t originally a Valentine op. Other agents had tried and failed to infiltrate the organization, and I pointed out that they were all _male_ agents. I lobbied for the assignment, and lobbied hard.”

She breathed in and out, and then, to Reid’s surprise, let out a single sob.

“I didn’t think that it would… turn out like it did.”

“Emily, you don’t have-” He whispered quickly.

“Yes, I do, Spencer. I do. Let me finish.”

“’Kay.”

“I posed as a low level arms broker, not as lady bait.”

“Smart.” Reid’s profiling kicked in on its own. “He’d be less suspicious of a player than an object of sexual desire. Paranoid men often see sex as a challenge to their authority even though they simultaneously seek it out re-affirm their sense of control. Doyle would’ve been less wary of a female associate due to his inherent devaluation of the gender and the knowledge that women are more driven by profit than power in business transactions.”

“Exactly my thinking,” She sounded pleased that he validated her opinion. “And it worked. When Doyle proposed that the relationship turn into something more… well, we were already further in than we’d ever gotten before and it seemed like too good an opportunity to turn down. My superiors were uncomfortable with my choice - they wanted to pull me out and prosecute with what they had. But I knew that we could get so much more… we could get it all if I sacrificed a little. It was just sex, I told myself. Just sex…”

Reid’s mind recoiled and his stomach twisted. _Just sex? As if sex is ever just anything!_ He gripped the glass of bourbon in his hand and before he could think about it, he threw it across the room and watched it shatter in a wet mess against the wall. His ribs telegraphed stabs of pain across his left side and he groaned sharply. _Stupidstupidstupid bloody moron…_

“Spencer?”

The pain in his side was too much and he ended up groaning into the phone in response. In retrospect, he thought that it was a wise decision that they weren’t having this conversation face to face.

“I’m sorry, Spence, I’m so, so sorry. I hate this…” She sounded so small.

“No.” He gritted through his teeth. “I’m the one with misguided feelings and sloppy impulse control. Finish what you started.”

“Misguided feelings?”

“Go on, Emily, finish it.”

“Okay.” She sighed. “So, we became lovers and I got the access that the investigation needed, and as a result I became completely cut off from the rest of my team. I was in the heart of the organization and totally isolated. I was absolutely terrified. My survival depended on the believability of my lies every day. There were whole months that passed during which I never left Doyle’s compound. I started to forget who I was.”

Reid squeezed his eyes shut and knocked his head against the back of the couch. He would’ve done just about anything to take all of this from her. He also wished that he didn’t have to hear it.

“The more that Doyle wanted me, the more I had to bring to the table to convince him of my feelings. I said things… I did things… things that I never said to or did with my fiancé. Every time that man had me I wanted to boil my own skin off my bones, but I had to smile and laugh and tell him that no other man ever meant what he did to me. I realized that the relationship that I had with Doyle had gone so much further than the one I had with the man that I intended to marry… and yet I despised Doyle. This relationship - based completely on lies - was the most important one of my life to that point. I was unworthy of the memory of my fiancé. I was unworthy of love. I became a cipher playing out roles that others asked of me because I had nothing of my own to contribute.”

Prentiss fell silent and Reid found himself open-mouthed in amazement at her conclusion. _She doesn’t think she’s a person. She can’t imagine that her presence matters in any way._

“Emily…” He began.

“You’re a good man, Spencer. Probably the best that I’ve ever known, but you’re wrong to care about me. I told you all of this so that you’d finally see it - that it isn’t you. There was never anything wrong with you. It’s me, and as clichéd as that sounds, I am 100% damaged goods and this is the best thing that I can do for you.”

He was temporarily at a loss for words. The overwhelming flaws of her argument poked at his intellect. They pushed back against the surge of irrational energy within him that wanted to break her down for her own stupidity and they collect her up again to be reassembled with care. 

“Okay, it’s my turn to talk now and you’re going to listen to me.” He tried to keep his voice gentle but firm at the same time. “I’ve heard everything that you said and I understand it - I really do - but I reject your conclusion completely.”

He felt her winding up a rebuttal so he pushed ahead with his own.

“Firstly, one of the main pillars of your argument is that you have dishonored the love that you shared with your college fiancé because of the depths that you achieved in your undercover life with Ian Doyle. You also suggest that you may not be capable of love despite statements that you made on the subject to both your late fiancé and me. You have dishonored nothing and no one. Your time with Doyle was a tremendous ongoing stressor and you were actively terrified by it. We’ve both witnessed UNSUBs break under less. You can do extraordinary things while in the grip of terror - trust me; I’ve experienced the phenomena more times than I care to remember. How long were you undercover?”

“18 months.” She whispered.

“And how long had you known your fiancé before he died?”

“A year.”

“So your duration with Doyle was longer and more psychologically intense… yes, you probably did experience a more profound relationship with a man you despised but that does not make the two relationships comparable in any other way. You loved your fiancé and you faked love to survive Doyle; you’re attempting to compare apples and hand grenades.”

She sighed over the line but offered up nothing else. He continued.

“Secondly, you assert that you are a cipher for human emotion, in part because you never developed a strong identity of your own.”

“Yes.”

“What’s your favorite graphic novel?” He asked.

“What?”

“Answer me.”

“ _V for Vendetta_.”

“Now, tell me why.”

“Because it is a brilliantly realized political satire and it demonstrates both the rewards and perils of revolutionary sentiment. It succeeds both as art and as a cautionary parable on our blind inertia towards eroding civil liberties.”

“Why do you love Vonnegut?”

“Because his quixotic protagonists have never been matched in modern literature for their humor, irony, and devastating pathos. His work holds a mirror up to us all and yet we are always carried away by his relentless hope and optimism that we will overcome ourselves.”

“Why did you want to work at the BAU?”

“Because you nailed the guys that others couldn’t catch. Because it’s the ones who think that they can get away with it that need to pay the price the most. These victims have no one left to stand for them but us.”

“Do you see a pattern emerging? You have a strong moral code. You identify with those who challenge and fight for what they believe in. You are motivated to act when others can’t. That is evidence of a strong identity system at work within you. And I would add that it is an honorable identity at that.”

“Spencer, enough…”

“Wait, I have one last point.” He interrupted. “Finally, you choose to push me away because you can only play out the emotional scripts given to you - that you have no genuine feelings of your own to give to a relationship, correct?”

“I guess.”

“Did you care for your fiancé?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hate Doyle?”

“Yes.”

“So, you’ve known care and hatred.” He took a deep breath. “Now, did you ever care for me?”

The gasp over the line was immediate and impossible to disguise. He waited on her while his heart kicked out number 40.

“I care for you, Spencer. Deeply. It’s why I’m _doing this!_ Have you never felt that?”

He let out the breath that he was holding and leaned his head back in relief. _It wasn’t all self-delusion then…_

“And who told you to do that, Emily?” His voice cracked as he spoke.

“N-no one.”

“Did it service any agenda of yours? Was it part of a grander, more ambitious scheme somehow?”

“No!”

“Then you did it because you felt it and you wanted to.” He sighed. “You are a well-defined, strong, moral person who has been through great traumas that you kept to yourself. You have been loved and you have been used, and you care enough for others to try to save them, even if that isn’t your choice to make. You _are_ worthy of love and, moreover, you have no say in whether that happens or not; love is a gift that belongs to the giver. You’ve made stupid choices. Who hasn’t? Someone that I love and respect once told me that you can’t change the past, no matter how much you want to. Your past doesn’t make you monstrous. Your theory is disproved in its entirety.”

He felt all of his remaining energy drain from him as he fell silent. He couldn’t do anymore, but he wasn’t certain that it was enough. How do you make someone believe that her beliefs are false? How do you implant new beliefs without destroying their sense of self? The silence between them stretched on forever; only their breathing transmitted across the phone connection.

“I bet that you were devastating on the debate team.” She whispered eventually.

“I never joined one. No one likes a know-it-all.”

“I do. I like a specific one very much.”

She was so quiet that he thought that he must have misheard her. His heart muscle was gearing up for attack number 41 when he exerted some backbone and told the muscle to chill out a little. _Let her work this through a bit. I’m exhausted._

“I don’t know if this changes anything.”

“It changes everything, Em. But only if you let it.”

He heard her muffle a ragged sound and he closed his eyes, offering up a silent plea to who knows what: _Whatever the decision – let this be the last word on the matter. And let me have the strength to accept it._

“Your faith in me… defies explanation. How do you know that you can trust me after everything that’s happened?”

“I don’t. That’s what faith is, isn’t it?”

She laughed for the first time. It sounded thick and a little out of her control.

“Spencer?”

“Yeah?”

“May I call again tomorrow night?”

“Sure, anytime you want.” He smiled and laid his head back into the couch. “You know I’m a night owl.”

It was a place to start.


	12. The Paradox

The buzzer rang and Reid was glad that he was already standing as he went to answer it. His ribs had come a long way in the two weeks since he’d checked out of the hospital, but it still took some work to get him upright if he was sitting down. He kept his left arm close to his injured side as he twisted to open the front door in his narrow hallway.

“Hi.” Prentiss raised a bag of take-out into view. “Sorry I’m late - in the past 9 months a lot has changed. Chang’s closed down. It’s a pet spa now…”

“Hi.” Reid smiled and let her in. “So what did you get instead?”

“Bangkok Palace. You like Thai, right?”

“So long as I can use a fork.”

They unpacked the meal on the coffee table. Reid’s ribs complained equally when he sat up straight or if he slouched, so he had elected to spend most of his time on his couch. At least part of him could be comfortable most of the time…

Prentiss had returned from New York a week before, having tied up all of the loose ends that Interpol demanded of her. She was now, officially, a _retired_ Interpol agent, which ironically entitled her to 6 years back pay during her ‘undercover reassignment’ to the FBI and a generous severance package. Prentiss was using the unexpected windfall to set up a fund to provide for Declan’s college tuition; she considered it blood money for Doyle anyway so it seemed appropriate that Declan use it instead. The boy had been placed in the custody of his great aunt in Massachusetts, being his last blood relative and free of criminal dealings. Prentiss hadn’t seen the boy since the day at Dulles airport and had made no plans to visit him in Massachusetts. Reid wondered how she felt about suddenly having no place in Declan’s life anymore.

She’d been showing up at his place for dinner every other night since her return. She hadn’t asked first and he hadn’t refused her when she arrived unannounced. The nightly phone calls while she was in New York were one thing, but the visits were something else. While they never did anything more than talk or watch old movies together over take-out, Reid wondered what Prentiss had in mind almost every second that she was in his apartment. It was nice - like old times - but there was also unspoken awkwardness that he couldn’t ignore. He once again found himself questioning Prentiss’s intentions. After an enjoyable debate over which was the best sci-fi film of all time, Reid decided that he’d take the subject in hand.

“So, Em, are you worried that I’ll starve or something?”

“What?” She said around a mouthful of pad thai.

“This is the third night that you’ve showed up to feed me. I’m not complaining: both the food and the dinner conversation are excellent. But still, I’m wondering…”

Prentiss nodded and looked away. She pushed her plate across the table and settled back into the chair that she always took opposite him on the couch. Her right hand began to worry the worn leather armrest under it.

“You could use a little meat on your bones, you know.”

Reid acknowledged her playful jab but also gave her a look that said it wasn’t enough to change the subject. “I don’t need mothering - I’ve had plenty of that over the years.”

“Would it be so hard to accept help now and again, Spencer?”

“Probably about as hard as it is to get your _real reason_ for being here out of you…” He smiled a little to soften his words.

“I miss you.” She sighed. “I miss us - the way we used to be before it all got so… complicated.”

Her words hurt him; a sweet, sharp pain that was both welcome and worrying. His tone was eerily calm as he found himself responding to her.

“I don’t think it’s wise to deny that things _are_ complicated now. We can’t ignore that.”

“No, I know that. I just got used to talking to you again - every night on the phone, and now over dinner - I realized how much of that I took for granted over the years. Now, it seems like such an amazing thing to me. I find myself looking forward to these moments. I don’t want to lose that.”

“Why do you think you will?”

“Because eventually we’ll have to talk about what we’re _not_ saying…”

Reid nodded. He understood completely. He loved having her around again, but it wasn’t going to solve anything between them. They’d have to talk about it sooner or later.

“Well, I’ve been waiting for you to tell me what you’re going to do now. I mean, career-wise…”

“I have to face the mother of all review boards at the Bureau.” Prentiss rolled her eyes. She was probably sick to death of telling the same story over and over again. “But Hotch says that he’s pretty certain that he can re-instate me if I want that.”

“Do you?”

She gave him a look that was more powerful than any plea could’ve been. But he didn’t know what she was pleading for - he needed her to say it out loud.

“My decision sorta depends on you.” She murmured.

“What do you mean?”

“Have you made up your mind about going back to the unit?”

“Well, physically, I’m not capable right now. They’ve even got someone covering my classes at Quantico. And… and I find that I like teaching more and more.”

“But surely that can’t be enough, Spencer. You may not believe it, but I think that you were born to do the investigative fieldwork that you do. And I think that you need it to be happy. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying what you do, Spence, even when what you do is hunting killers.”

“Self-referencing determinism is a logical fallacy.” He blurted. “And I can learn to enjoy other things, I’m sure.”

Prentiss gave him a serious look. “Is it because of the headaches, or because of me?”

“Both.” He huffed and then raised his hand to indicate that there was more coming. “The headaches are an issue, although less so in recent weeks. But… being back at the BAU without you… I don’t know. It just _feels_ wrong, which is why I went on that crazy odyssey through Europe in the first place. On the other hand, I can’t work with you as we are now. In this limbo…”

His long fingers made sharp, encompassing motions in the air before them. “ _This_ has to be resolved before any decision can be made.”

“Would you come back if we could work together amicably?” She whispered.

“Most likely, yes.”

Prentiss nodded slowly and her features drew downwards draining all animation from her face. He was confused as she slumped into the chair and stared off into the distance. She nodded again, as if to herself, tightened her lips and stood up quickly.

“Okay. That’s what I’m going to work on.” The stony determination on her face was starting to scare him a little. “I’ve never felt at home the way I do in the BAU. I want to come back - but not at the expense of one of its finest agents. The unit needs you, Spencer, and it wouldn’t be the same with you gone.”

She smiled, but the happiness didn’t reach her eyes. _What are you hiding, Em?_

“So, I’ll work on making things comfortable between us again. I’ll gain back your trust because I don’t want to do this without you.”

She looked at him with her sad smile and he found himself perplexed by the dissonance between her words and her micro expressions. His heart was thrumming within him with the possibility of what she was _not_ saying, and he felt a course of action forming itself to counter it. She looked at her watch and went to get her bag and coat.

“It’s getting late. I should be running along.” 

He stood carefully, keeping his left arm locked to his side for support. “Umm, before you leave… can I ask you for something?”

“Sure. What is it?”

“Uhh… well, I have to readjust the support bandage around my ribs and stuff… I can do it on my own, but… well, it would be considerably less painful if you were to… help me with it.”

He was looking at his feet when he heard her huff out a breath through what could only be a smirk. He looked up and she was smiling at him with an ‘I-told-you-so’ expression on her face.

“Sure. I’d be happy to help.”

…

Reid sat on the edge of his bed and Prentiss looked at him trying not to remember anything from the one and only time she had ever been in that room. It seemed like a long time ago. Even longer now that she’d resolved to become Spencer Reid’s friend for the sake of their future at the BAU despite her realization that she was in love with him. She’d wondered what it would be like to be with him and it would seem that the one time was all that she would be allowed to have. She tried not to remember all of the other opportunities that she’d had over the years and squandered. That sort of thinking was only going to make things more difficult. She was also trying not to think about all the ways that she’d no longer be allowed to touch him, or look at him, or speak to him…

“Help me out of this, please.”

Reid raised his arms above him and hissed as she gently tugged his t-shirt over his head revealing a wide, white bandage wrapped around much of his torso.

“Sorry!” She said.

“There’s gonna be a lot of that, so let’s just assume that you’re sorry in advance and save you from saying it over and over.” He smiled at her, and then pointed towards his dresser.

“There’s some antibiotic ointment and a dish with a clean washcloth. Put some warm water in the dish. You’ll have to remove the bandage, clean the suture, and dab a little of the ointment onto it before trussing me back up.”

Prentiss went to the bathroom to fill the basin with water. She looked around a saw his personal effects scattered throughout the room. Her eyes landed on his shaving set: an old fashioned pearl-handled cream brush and straight razor, hanging in a brass display. Even his toiletries were vintage. She peeked into the cabinet behind the mirror and found a half empty bottle of aftershave. She breathed it in and almost immediately felt as if he were in the room with her, the cool, marine scent wrapping around her like fog. She snapped out of her revelry and took the basin of water back to her patient.

Reid had undone the clasps that kept his bandage in place and was attempting to unwind it around him. His face twitched as he tried not to bend too much or stretch his left side.

“Hey, let me do that, okay?” She moved to him and took over the anti-mummification duties.

She slowly unwrapped the bandage and tried not to say ‘Sorry!’ every time he hitched to one side. When the wrapping fell away at last, she was surprised by the large bruise just above his surgery scar, purple at the center and yellowing along the edges. The suture, by comparison, looked businesslike and understated.

“Jeez!”

“Yeah. My ribs are a major pain in the ass. It’s actually looking much better than it did, if you can believe it…”

Prentiss got on her knees to have a better look. The suture was healing well, and by the looks of the spectacular bruise, it would be gone in another week or so. She dipped the washcloth in the water and rang it out, then she took his left arm and laid it across her shoulder so that she could get around it to clean him. He’d stopped talking and she could feel him looking at her. She wished that she could look back at him without showing what she was thinking. She raised the damp cloth and pressed it against the center of his chest so that he could get used to the temperature.

“Okay?”

She felt him nod, yes, so she proceeded to gently cleanse and rinse the scar. He twitched a couple of times as she swept over the deeper sections of his bruise, but he said nothing. She traded the cloth for the ointment and dabbed a small amount along his scar. The tips of her fingers traced over his ribs and the edges of his now-healing suture as light falls over a landscape. She found herself circling and following invisible paths along his topography long after she should have finished and started rewrapping him. Silence folded them up together and she let herself pretend that it only seemed overly intimate to her, and that he was preoccupied with differential equations or something. Her fingers found their way back to the suture and she traced every inch of it, telling herself: _this is because of me - he’ll always have this reminder of what I did to him._ Tears pricked at her behind her eyes but she took a deep breath and shook them away. She became aware that Reid’s breathing had changed.

“Emily.”

She looked up. He was staring at her, his eyes calm and inviting. He tilted his head in an unspoken question and willed her to answer him with his stare. Before she could stop it, a tear fell down her cheek and she tried to brush it away nonchalantly. When she looked back again, there was the understanding that she had come to trust over the years in his face, but his question remained. She felt her emotions rise up from her stomach, through her chest, to become lodged in her throat. She tried to push them back but it was too late - the only way to rid herself of the painful sensation was to open up and let them out.

“All I can think about is the second chance that you mentioned.” She was impressed that her voice sounded as even as it did.

Reid raised his eyebrows in another question. Trust him to pick this moment to go non-verbal on her…

“All I can think about is that second chance and how I want it to work out, and then I look at this” She pointed to his scar. “And I listen to how you want us to be so that we may move forward, and… I _know_ that I can’t have that second chance. What I want is selfish and unfair, and I’m sitting here baffled by my ability to make the wrong choices in any given situation.”

“Slow down.” He whispered. “Start by telling me what it _is_ that you want, because you haven’t yet…”

“You, Spencer. I want you.”

He shook his head once as if he was confused and thought that he hadn’t heard her correctly.

“That night we spent together, here…” She felt her cheeks flush but she didn’t care anymore. “Afterwards - when I woke up - I didn’t know where I was at first. Being undercover you get used to that, but the alarm is always there… anyway, I turned and saw you lying next to me, and I was flooded with this overwhelming sense of… of peace… or homecoming, maybe…”

She was struggling to be understood. It was hard to articulate the exact feeling since she had never experienced before in her life. “I’ve never felt as happy as I did in that moment with you.”

Reid continued to stare at her with an indescribable expression on his face. It was frustrating because she couldn’t tell what sort of effect she was having on him. _I’ve come this far, might as well go the rest of the way…_

“And then I did what I always do: I locked you out and pushed away. You know the reasons why now, but… I really screwed up this time. I usually distance myself from guys because I don’t want them to get overly invested in me, because I’m not invested in them. But it was already too late for that with you. Maybe it was finding you on my doorstep in France, maybe it was before that… I don’t know exactly when it happened, but it took you bleeding out on that runway before the thought caught up with the feeling.”

She gently removed his arm from her shoulder and rose up on her knees to look him in the eye. What she had to say next was important and had to be unambiguous. 

“I love you.” She swallowed and pushed through the rest of it. “I didn’t say it when I should have, and now… well, I know what you need from me now, and this isn’t it. So, who cares if you get a second chance? What I’d give anything to change requires more than just me.”

Reid’s face became deadly serious. He stared at her for a long time and she used everything she had not to flinch under his gaze. She might have just lost her one true friend for good, but she had to wait and see how badly she had blown everything to hell. He leaned in with a small groan as his left arm clamped against his unbound ribs. His eyes flicked across every feature of her before he spoke.

“Say it again.” His voice was almost a threat and she felt her pulse try to strangle her as he stared.

“I love you.”

“Now tell me why.”

“Well, the short answer is it’s everything that matters about you, Spencer.”

She paused but knew that she’d have to give him more. A lot more. _Go on… tell him. Tell him everything. What have you got to lose?_

“It’s your force of character, your loyalty, and the passion that you apply equally to all aspects of your life. It’s the way you love those close to you: fiercely and without reservation. It’s your massive brain and the things that it can do. It’s your smokin’ hot self, which you don’t see but it leaves me breathless. It’s the way that you’ve always been there for me, no matter what - no one else has ever done that. It’s because you’ve always had my back - I trust you with my life and I always will. It’s the crazy way you love what you do - because I love it the same way. It’s 6 years of getting to know you and wishing that we’d met much, much sooner.”

She stopped and took a breath to steady her cracking voice. “It’s your sweater vests and your awkwardness and your absolute commitment to being the person that you are, not the person that other people are comfortable with.”

She reached out and cupped his face in her hands. “It’s because you’re my best friend and every time I see you, you feel like home to me. It’s how you make me want to be more than I am, because your good opinion of me _matters_. I can’t imagine how I would move on in my life without you in it, and the thought that I might have to is making me physically ill. This is all I have, Spence - just these inadequate words, and feelings that I can’t run away from anymore. You’re the guy that I don’t have any right to possess, and I’ll spend the rest of my life regretting that I let you slip away.”

She was shaking and she didn’t care. She’d done it: she’d told him the truth - finally - and it was liberating. Nothing that she said would make up for the past year, but at least he’d know that he’d gotten to her as much as she’d gotten to him. She wanted him to feel the power of his own worth. She wanted him to know that he was invaluable, irreplaceable. She wanted to give him that.

Reid reached forward and pulled her into him. Their lips met blindly. It was part of the general feeling that she had about him that she believed she could find her way back to him no matter what stood in her way. When his mouth pulled against hers, she pushed herself into his chest and let him in. Her arms circled around him and it was only when he groaned against her and his left side stiffened that she remembered how fragile he was.

“Sorry! Oh God… sorry, Spence…”

“I said stop apologizing.” He mumbled against her lips. “The ribs don’t care anyway.”

“I just…” Prentiss was silenced for a minute as he caught her lower lip and drew it in. Her skin was suddenly alive with pinpricks of energy as if she had been turned into some sort of conductor. She was amazed at how quickly her could get her hot and bothered. Did he really not know that he was good at it, or did it just work out that way because it was _them_?

They shifted against each other and he twitched again, this time breaking off their kiss to hiss through the discomfort.

“We have pretty awful timing.” She breathed against his cheek as she smiled.

“No argument here.” He wheezed.

They spent a long time just staring at one another. Her smile was contagious and soon infected him as well. He was quite a picture sitting there topless, smiling, with a large gash tracing up his side.

“Hi there.”

“Hi.”

“Are you sure about this? ‘Cause I think that it would break my heart if this was some sort of elaborate revenge scheme on your part…”

“Revenge isn’t really my thing, Em. Besides, I don’t want to be your friend. I want so much more than that.”

“Yeah?” She could feel the stupid smile getting wider on her face.

“You should see yourself right now.” He chuckled. “You look like a kid whose been told that she can have her pick of any toy in the shop…”

“That’s sorta the way I feel, actually.”

She leaned in and left a soft, lingering kiss on his lips. When she broke away he had the look of someone who’d had all of his pain taken from him.

“I’m not going to be your toy, Em…”

She smiled and nudged herself into the sensitive spot on his neck just below the jaw line.

“No. You’re going to be my heart.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

6 MONTHS LATER

Reid leaned against his car and waited for the jet to finish taxiing to a stop. They were a little late getting in but he didn’t mind; fall was coming and the cool night air felt refreshing against him. Besides, there wasn’t anywhere else that he’d rather be than waiting to see her again, even if it was at an airstrip at 11:30 at night. This case had taken her away for 12 days, much longer than usual. In their nightly calls, he could feel her frustration as the intensity of the case wore her down. They had a rule that they never discussed an active case until it was over - he didn’t want to second guess the team’s conclusions from afar. But once she was back, they often held detailed post-mortems as she walked him through it step by step. He knew that this one would be a doozy.

He missed fieldwork more and more, and knew that a change was coming for him soon. He could live without the anonymous hotel rooms, the bad coffee, and the sleepless nights spent on the hunt, but he found it increasingly difficult to do without the high that he got from a collaborative investigation. He missed the mysteries and he missed his family. But most of all, he missed her. He smiled to himself as he thought that although the separation was hard to handle, the reunions often offset the absences.

The jet’s main hatch opened and folded out into stairs that led to the tarmac. Slowly, the team shuffled down the stairs and headed towards him in the parking lot. They all looked exhausted. She saw him from the runway and quickened her step, outstripping the others. When she got within a few feet of him, she dropped her go-bag and launched herself into his arms. He held her as tightly as he could.

“How’d you know when we’d be getting in?” Prentiss mumbled against him.

“A little bird sent me a note.”

He looked over her shoulder for J.J., found her eyes and nodded slightly. She smiled and gave him a wink as she headed towards her own car. Family looked out for one another.

“It was a bad one, huh?” He squeezed her against him and he felt her nod into his neck. “Okay, well, let’s get you home.”

“Hey kid, what’s a guy gotta do to get you to pick _him_ up from the airport?” Morgan was walking towards them, exhaustion unable to dim his brilliant smile. “I’m not feeling the love anymore, Reid. It’s because of my legs, isn’t it? I can’t compete against Prentiss’s stems…”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Morgan. Your calves are very shapely - ask anyone. In fact, I hear that Ruiz down in domestic terrorism goes on and on about them.”

Prentiss snorted loudly as she slid out of his arms and leaned against the car next to him. “Derek, you’re the Nureyev of the FBI with legs that go on forever and buns that just won’t quit.”

“You know, Reid, you were a lot less sarcastic before you started hanging out with Gorgeous Snarkypants here…” Morgan nodded to Prentiss.

“There are entrance requirements to the Prentiss Club.” Reid grinned. “Sarcasm rates highly.”

“Along with science fiction knowledge, appreciation for early punk rock, and the proper preparation of a margarita.” Prentiss nodded to Reid as she listed off her prerequisites.

Morgan raised his eyebrows. “You like punk music?”

Reid shook his head. “It’s a percentage score, not pass-fail…”

“And he makes a mean margarita.” Hotch appeared behind Morgan, a faint smile tracing his lips.

“Okay, well, I didn’t realize that it was ‘pick-on-Morgan-night’…”

“But it’s Thursday…” Hotch looked innocent and confused.

Morgan smiled and held up his hands in surrender. “Right. I’m gonna hit it while I still have some of my ego left in tact… Reid, see you next Monday at the firing range?”

“Yep. Don’t be late again or I’ll tell Agent Ruiz that you like his calves too.”

Morgan shook his head and thumped his chest over his heart twice and then pointed to Reid. It was a thing that he’d started after Reid had been shot; it was his shorthand for the love he felt for his friend. Reid didn’t have a sign that he gave back, but it probably wasn’t necessary. The way that symbol made him feel radiated out of him every time he saw it. He smiled and waved to Morgan.

“You are missed.” Hotch murmured.

“Rotation’s coming up in a month. Believe me, I’m ready to come back.”

Hotch stared at both of them for a few moments. “I trust that I won’t have to remind you to watch your proximity while on duty… Strauss doesn’t like the idea of you two working together again.”

“It won’t be a problem, sir.” Prentiss affirmed.

“Besides, it’s only for 6 months and then I rotate back to teaching at Quantico. If it doesn’t work, I’ll figure something else out, Hotch. I won’t compromise the unit’s operational status.”

“I know you won’t, Reid.” Hotch stared again and an expression flickered across his face. Reid stood up straight as something that should have been obvious to him suddenly revealed itself.

“You _knew_ before we told anyone. For how long?”

“Since you asked for vacation time to go to Europe. When I saw the look on Prentiss’s face during her first day back, I knew that I’d have to start making contingency plans around this eventuality.” Hotch smiled. “I’ve had a lot of time to get used to the idea.”

Prentiss and Reid stared slack jawed at their superior. No matter how good they were at hiding their emotions, it seemed that it would be a brisk day in hell before they could pull one over on Hotch. Reid was reminded to never play poker with that man. Ever.

“I should go. It’s late, and Jack will wake up when I get home. It’ll take forever to get him down again.” Hotch’s tone warmed as he spoke of his son. It was nice to see the man that existed under the leader they knew, if only for a moment. “I’ll see you on Monday, Prentiss. Reid, see you on the 16th.”

Prentiss and Reid waved as they watched him go.

“How did he…”

“I dunno.”

“Do you think…”

“Maybe.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, I know…”

After Hotch’s car pulled out of the lot and they were alone, Reid pulled Prentiss into him and kissed her slowly. Her arms wound around his neck as she melted into him. He loved how she could slot herself into the voids that surrounded him as if she was a missing piece of his puzzle. He mumbled against her - not really saying anything - just voicing his contentment at finding his center again.

“Home?” He whispered into her hair.

“Yes, please.” She sighed

…

“So, it turned out that his victim criteria _was_ based on an incident from his past, but it was because of what he witnessed his foster father do, not something that he did himself.” Prentiss said as they exited the elevator and walked towards the furthest apartment on that floor.

“That means that the only accurate profile would have had to combine _his_ pathology with that of his foster father, whose crimes went unnoticed when he was alive.” Reid concluded. “Honestly, Em, that’s a pretty unique signature and it would’ve been almost impossible to figure it out any earlier based on the evidence that you described to me. You guys did everything you could.”

“ _You_ would’ve seen it.” She stood behind him as he fished out a set of keys and unlocked the door.

“Maybe, eventually. But I doubt that it would have occurred to me in time to prevent any further deaths. I’m just a man, not a psychic or a supercomputer…”

They pushed into the apartment, and Prentiss dropped her go-bag in the hall as Reid shut the door behind them.

“Right there, huh? You can’t drag it into the bedroom or something?”

Prentiss turned quickly and pulled him into her. Her mouth left hot halos of breath wherever it landed: his lips, his cheeks, his throat… His hands grabbed her face and stilled her frantic roaming as he dragged her back to his mouth. He pushed into her and felt a swell of satisfaction as she moaned against him, clutching at his jacket for balance. He pushed further until they backstepped into the hallway wall. Reid pressed himself against her until he could feel her chest expanding and contracting under his. It was exciting to have her this close, contained against him. He ground his pelvis against her; he knew that she was tired but he didn’t want any misunderstandings about what he was after.

“I missed you.” She gasped when he let her lips go. “I hate leaving you behind on these long cases.”

“I can tell.” He bit down on her neck and was rewarded with a yelp of surprise. “On the upside, I’ve had 12 days to think about what I want to do to you.”

“How many scenarios did you come up with this time?”

“47.”

“Really?” She pulled away from his lips with a look of amazement.

“It was _12 days_ , Emily…”

“Okay.” She smiled as she drew his lower lip into her mouth. “But can you pick one that involves the bedroom?”

“Done.”

He quickly shucked off his jacket and reached to peel her out of hers. She grabbed his shirt and pulled it free from his pants, and then she went after his tie, her fingers untangling the knot and whipping it to the hall floor. Their mouths connected and parted between the avid attempts to get past one another’s clothing. One passionate exchange made Prentiss go limp against him, her hands abandoning his clothes and burying themselves in his hair instead. He moaned as her fingers ran along his scalp; he didn’t like anyone touching his hair but her. She began to do something extraordinary with her tongue and he lost a considerable amount of his control. He attacked her mouth and pushed them backwards roughly, which nearly sent them sprawling as they connected with a large box left in the hall. Reid caught her and steadied himself before they both ended in a mood-altering heap.

“You need to start unpacking these.” He growled as he shook out his foot in the direction of the box. “Seriously. If you don’t, I’m gonna do it and you won’t find any of your stuff until we move again.”

“We’ve only been here a month, Spence…”

“I was unpacked within the first two days!”

“Okay, okay… this weekend, I promise. Now can you focus on your scenario please? Because all I really care about right now is getting you naked and having you all over me.”

“I want you to know that I see your distraction technique for what it is.” He kissed her roughly. “And it is extremely effective.”

She laughed against his lips. “Enough talk, pretty boy. Take me to bed.”

…

Reid stretched and reached for Emily under the duvet. His hands hit nothing but mattress and he slid one eye open to check out his surroundings. His muscles ached pleasantly and he still had the smell of her on him. He was usually a cleanliness freak but the particular mixture of their two scents lulled him into a state of relaxation that was hard to stir from. It must have been part of the ongoing mystery of specific human biochemistry. It was the same reason that he attributed to their sexual compatibility; he didn’t believe that he possessed any unusual skills in bed and yet their sex life was often spectacular. There were off days, of course - when they went wrong, they went very wrong - but more often than not they were left breathless, sated, and completely drained. He couldn’t explain it and he knew that such consistent satisfaction was not the norm for most couples. The only plausible reason that he could think of was that it was _them_ \- some ideal combination of biological and chemical factors that produced consistently optimized results. The theory made him curious but he thought it best not to question it too closely. He was just delighted with the results, and was going to leave it at that.

He opened his other eye. Nope, she was definitely not in the bed. Where had she gone? He rolled over and contemplated going back to sleep when he smelled something new. He threw the duvet away from his face and followed the scent. There was a steaming mug on the bedside table within his reach.

_Oh, this is definitely love…_

His hand shot out and retrieved the mug, making it disappear behind a mountain of duvet and pillows. He groaned as he swallowed his favorite elixir that had been prepared to his exact requirements. Just a few more mouthfuls and he’d have the energy he needed to make it to the shower. 

_She’s got your number, buddy. Sex and coffee…_

Whatever. He’d happily spend a lifetime stumbling over boxes in exchange for those offerings. After a few more swigs from his mug, he slid out of bed and headed for the bathroom.

…

He found her in the living room surrounded by half unpacked boxes of records. She wore one of his old Cal Tech t-shirts and a pair of boxers as she poured over the colorful LP sleeves in front of her. He always found it arousing to see her in his clothes. It was another one of those ‘couple’ things that he had been unaware of before, but now found to be an unexpected joy. He crossed the room dressed only in a pair of loose pants, his hair still wet from his shower. She had the stereo on - a 30 year old B&O unit that she’d bought in a specialty shop. Jeff Buckley was wailing from the classic Techniques turntable.

Most people didn’t know that Prentiss was a vinyl geek. It started legitimately in her teens when records were still the dominant medium for music collectors, but she had kept collecting long after cassettes, CDs, and various digital files had all tried to kill off the format that she claimed gave the richest, warmest, fullest tone available to the human ear. Reid had even witnessed her washing her records once. He understood a rabid obsession when he saw it and wisely kept his incredulity to himself. Love the woman, love the records…

She looked up and smiled as he collapsed onto the floor next to her in a pile of ridiculous limbs.

“Morning.”

“Hi. Thanks for the coffee.”

“No problem. You’re not much use until you’ve had your first cup anyway.”

“Hmmm. What are you doing?”

“I’m organizing my collection. Getting stuff out of boxes, like you said…”

“Want some help?”

“Sure.” She seemed amused by his suggestion and sat back as he looked over the selections that she had already organized.

“Ummm… well, you’re not going alphabetically… is it chronological?”

She shook her head.

“Geographic?”

“Nope.”

“By genre?”

She laughed and shook her head again. “No. It’s autobiographical.”

His eyes widened. Well, that was certainly idiosyncratic of her, not that he had much room to judge given the meticulous way he organized his books.

“I’m not sure that I’ll be much help to you then… I don’t know every single moment of your life up to this point.”

“Awww, c’mon… you know a lot about me, Spencer.” She murmured. “Anything you don’t know, you could just ask about.”

He looked at her and realized that she was offering him an invitation, one that she wouldn’t have dared to offer a year ago. His heart squeezed tight within him when he thought how far she’d come since then, how far they’d both come. He felt a large grin spread across his face as he nodded his acceptance of her proposal.

“Okay then… I know that your first record was…” He skimmed over the random assortment of sleeves spread out over the floor and stretched out to snatch up a worn, battered cover. “ _London Calling_ by The Clash, which you stole from your 14 year old boyfriend when you caught him kissing another girl under the bleachers at school.”

“Correct.”

“What was the last record that you bought?”

Prentiss concentrated on the piles and flicked her hands here and there. He watched her face intently; she knew exactly what she was looking for and when she spotted it her expression dissolved into a mix of triumph and excitement. She was thoroughly entertaining to watch when she was unguarded. A thrill ran through him to know that he was one of the only people who ever saw her this way. She rose up on her knees and reached out to pull a record sleeve that was half buried under others. She slid the record out gently and presented him with the sleeve as she traded Jeff Buckley for her new selection. She lowered the stylus and waited. A lone female voice shivered out of the speakers. No back beat, no instrumentation. 

“I bought this when I went to New York.”

_Just one step at a time_  
And closer to destiny  
I knew at a glance  
There would always be a chance for me.  
With someone I could live for  
Nowhere I would rather be. 

_Is your love strong enough?_  
Like a rock in the sea.  
Am I asking too much?  
Is your love strong enough? 

He stretched out and stared at the speakers as the singer mesmerized him. At first, the song didn’t seem to fit within Prentiss’s range, but as the distressed synths and distorted guitar kicked in he changed his opinion. This was her all over. More importantly, he understood how the lyrics had spoken to her. The all-or-nothing gamble on another person, the singer’s question - perhaps it was the same question Prentiss had asked of herself at the time - it all made sense to him in the frame of reference with which he was achingly familiar. He felt something brush the faded scar on his left side and he turned back to find Prentiss staring at him. She slowly leaned forward on her hands and knees and bent to kiss the scar. He lay back and watched as his skin shivered under her lips and the sweep of her hair. She looked up along his torso at him and he raised his chin towards her.

“Come here.” He whispered.

She crawled up along him until her face hovered above his. He reached up and pulled her gently down to his mouth. Her body followed, settling into the contours of his. They kissed in slow, generous pulls, his hands framing her face and hers buried deep into his damp hair. As the song ended and the record moved to the next track, he felt the music fall away from him, instead getting lost in their breathing and the sound that their lips made against each other. In time, the music stopped completely and she pulled away with a slightly disconnected look about her when she realized it.

“It’s silly how a song can effect you, isn’t it?” She seemed a little embarrassed. 

“I don’t think so.” He stroked a strand of hair away from her face. “Listening to that song allows me to understand how you felt then. It took me back to that moment in time as well, when I felt a similar desperation. I didn’t know how I was going to move on without you, Emily.”

“We came pretty close to screwing this all up.”

“Maybe.” He kissed her lips quickly. “But I think that whatever has held us together all of these years would’ve drawn us back into each other’s orbits eventually. We’d either have to achieve synchronicity or one of our paths would decay until it collapsed into the other destroying us both.”

“Your cosmic metaphors are always so dire, Spence.”

“Hey, the universe is a dark and scary place. I’m just glad that I found someone to hold onto in the void - to keep me centered and focused.”

“That’s all I am to you? A sexy gyroscope?” Her face was a mask of righteous indignation.

“Hardly.” He chuckled and rolled them on his side as he kissed her again. “You’re _my_ Emily.” 

_Not Perfect Emily, or a phantom one, but the real thing in my arms._

“Speaking of centered, I can’t wait for you to rejoin the unit. I’ve been feeling unbalanced there without you. This rotation thing…”

“It’s good for us, Em. It gives a little distance and perspective, and it will ensure that my stress levels remain manageable. I haven’t had a headache in 5 months, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I know, I know…” Prentiss buried her face into his shoulder.

“Besides, I _do_ enjoy teaching. I don’t want to give it up entirely. And giving the students a chance to participate in actual fieldwork is invaluable.”

“Oh yeah, thanks for that… Bishop is a douchebag.”

“Bishop has the potential to be a great profiler, if only someone can beat the arrogance out of him first. I’m surprised that Rossi hasn’t knocked him down a bit by now…”

“The only guy Bishop seems to respect is you.”

“Oh.” Reid huffed. “Well… that’s a little unexpected…”

“Not really. You’re the new White Knight of the Bureau, Special Agent Kickass…”

“Jeez, why can’t everyone just let that go? All I did was go to the firing range and _practice_ …” 

“Listen to you… being a mentor to baby agents and wanting to downplay your tactical reputation… it’s hard to believe that you’re the same guy I met nearly 7 years ago.”

“I bet that you couldn’t have imagined yourself living with him, could you?”

“No offense, Spence, but you seemed awfully young when I first met you. That thought would’ve made me feel like a cradle robber.” She giggled.

“The age difference hasn’t changed, Emily.”

“Well, _that_ Spencer Reid wouldn’t have dared to suggest doing what we did last night.” She kissed him slowly. “Let alone do it well enough to make me wake him up to repeat it later on.”

“I just do what I’m told.” He smirked.

“Oh c’mon… you’re as stubborn and rebellious as I am. Just in a different way.”

“Well, when you’re explaining to our kids where their obstinate defiance comes from, just keep the age-inappropriate sexual exploits to yourself, okay?” 

He chuckled and then stopped when he saw her face. She was staring at him as if he had started speaking in tongues. _Whoops. Did you just say too much again?_

“I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that…”

“You want to have children?” Her voice cracked.

_Way to go, Genius. You conveniently forgot her feelings about family and children. You forgot how cagey she was about telling you of her abortion… the way she hid Declan from everyone…_

“Well,” He cleared his throat, feeling awkward in front of the one person who didn’t inspire that sensation anymore. “I mean, if someone asked me that… in general… I’d probably say that I found the prospect frightening and unlikely. But, I don’t feel that way about being a parent with you. I find _that idea_ … intriguing.”

“You want to have children… _with me_?” She was white as a sheet.

_Man, just shut up!_

“Listen… just forget that I said anything.” He started to backpedal. “We’re just happy and doing well… I got carried away. We’ve never talked about anything long-term. I-I just… you know, we moved in together and came clean to everyone at work… it just seems like we’re… moving _towards_ something, you know? I guess that I thought _that something_ might some day include a family. But maybe you don’t want kids… maybe you don’t want kids with me. With my family history… well, I’d understand if-”

“You _are_ my family, Spencer. You and the team.” She fought to keep her voice even but her eyes gave her away. “We are moving towards something. And some day… I could see our family including a little Reid. I think that that would make me very happy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She seemed relieved. “I never knew that you felt this way.”

“Like I said, this is sort of case-specific. You make me feel all sorts of things that I’ve never felt before.”

She blushed and curled her face into his chest to hide it. _Wow. It’s so great that the blushing thing never gets old._ He stroked her shoulder and remained still and quiet with her for a long time. Eventually, a thought came to him.

“Have you ever heard of the Irresistible Force Paradox?”

“Hmmm? No. What is it?”

“It’s sometimes known as the Unstoppable Force Paradox. Philosophers have tried to resolve what initially seems to be a simple situation: what happens if an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? You see, if the unstoppable force _stops_ or the immovable object _moves_ , our definitions of universal absolutes lose all meaning. Reality as we know it disintegrates.”

“Interesting.”

“Yeah. It suddenly reminds me of us.”

“Wait… what? Okay… you’re gonna have to explain that ‘cause that doesn’t seem flattering at all, Spencer.” She turned in his arms and gave him a doubtful look.

“Hear me out. There are ways to resolve the paradox - they’re just unprovable, that’s all. Some say that the meeting of two immutable forces would result in the destruction of both through the release of an immeasurable amount of energy and heat. In essence, they are describing the Big Bang theory. Still others postulate that the collision would result in the creation of an alternate universe, one in which the unstoppable force existed and another for the immovable object, thereby preserving their absolute qualities by avoiding the meeting altogether.”

He looked down at her but it was clear from her unimpressed expression that he hadn’t made his point clearly enough.

“You see, there are immutable qualities to our psychological make-up that cannot be altered after puberty. It’s the way we are hardwired as a species. I knew this when I asked you to come back to the States with me - it went against everything in your nature to accept my proposal.”

“But you asked anyway.”

“Yes, because it is an immutable part of my personality to go to impossible lengths to protect those I love. Neither one of us can escape these motivations.”

“Okay… I’ll buy that. Now, explain the collision part.”

“Because we cannot avoid these conflicting motivations, our paths were set on an inescapable intersection at an exact moment in time. When they collided, something that should have destroyed us instead altered our reality forever. Our immutable qualities remain and yet, improbably, neither one of us was destroyed by our collision.”

“Well… how do you square _that_ with either solution to the paradox?”

“Remember how I thought that we were meant to come back to each other until we resolved what was between us? What if we collided and created an alternate reality, but in _each_ reality we were forced to meet again and create more realities in order to avoid collisions. An infinite number of realities for an infinite number of avoidances - all developing instantaneously…”

“You’re boggling my mind right now.”

“What if the _last_ instance of collision - the one beyond ‘infinite’ - resulted in harmony… a synchronous co-existence of absolutes in conflict, and thereby collapsed all other realities with its resolution of the impossible?”

“So… you’re saying that us lying on our living room floor together is a synchronous co-existence of absolutes in conflict? A one-in-an-infinite outcome of a random decision?”

“Well, basically I was using it as a metaphor… it sums up why I feel the way I feel about all of this…”

“Which is?”

“Remarkably, improbably fortunate.” He smiled at her.

“Wow. You were right… chance is a frightening thing.”

“Maybe chance is just architecture that we can’t see.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb, his eyes dark and serious.

She stared at him for a long time. He watched as things passed across her features that she didn’t share. It was fine by him; he just needed to say what he felt out loud. Eventually, one thought remained with her, and he watched it grow from an idea, to a question, and finally into a whisper.

“Spencer, would you do it all again?”

“I could do without being shot.” He averred. “But… yes, I’d do it all again, Emily. Sometimes you have to do something truly awful in order to survive. And I more than survived this… the payoff was worth it.”

“Just one chance in an infinite number of possible outcomes…”

He felt her fingers trace the scar along his side as her eyes held their own against his stare.

“Yeah. Almost completely impossible.” He murmured.

She nodded slowly as she pulled him into all of the spaces against her that only he would fit. She waited until they seemed to become a new entity, one that was no longer capable of separating and surviving. He felt their hearts slow and synchronize, their breathing matched and measured. When at last she spoke, he had lost track of how long they’d been still and staring in one another’s arms.

“Okay.” She whispered. “I can live with that.”

 

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The song featured in this chapter is How To Destroy Angels' cover of "Is Your Love Strong Enough". I have no idea if it has been released on vinyl, but it seems unlikely given Trent Reznor's love of all things digital. I did own a copy of the original version of this song by Bryan Ferry on vinyl back in the 80s. Yep, I'm that old. Both versions are excellent.
> 
> 2\. The Irresistible Force Paradox is a real thing, though I have simplified and manipulated it here for my own purposes. The inspiration for the title of this story was actually NOT this theory, but a song of the same name by Jane's Addiction. It only occurred to me as I was writing this final chapter that the paradox would fit nicely into this fic and applied to everything that Reid and Prentiss had been through together.
> 
> 3\. Prentiss's vinyl organizational system was taken from High Fidelity.


End file.
